wacom entries appear even when not having a tablet

[magilus]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg

The hardware detection of Xorg does not seem to work fine. The configuration process of Xorg (can be manually called by dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg) adds wacom entries to the xorg.conf even when not having a tablet.

The following entries are obsolete for me:

>Section "InputDevice"
> Driver "wacom"
> Identifier "stylus"
> Option "Device" "/dev/wacom" # Change to
> # /dev/input/event
> # for USB
> Option "Type" "stylus"
> Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
>EndSection
>
>Section "InputDevice"
> Driver "wacom"
> Identifier "eraser"
> Option "Device" "/dev/wacom" # Change to
> # /dev/input/event
> # for USB
> Option "Type" "eraser"
> Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
>EndSection
>
>Section "InputDevice"
> Driver "wacom"
> Identifier "cursor"
> Option "Device" "/dev/wacom" # Change to
> # /dev/input/event
> # for USB
> Option "Type" "cursor"
> Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
>EndSection

[Tony Rick (tonyr-hevanet)]

Note that section ServerLayout aslo contains references
to these devices:

>Section "ServerLayout"
> Identifier "Default Layout"
> Screen "Default Screen" 0 0
> InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
> InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
> InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
> InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
> InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
>EndSection

In the thread
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=270646
Lord Illidan says
"I wish that they could be an option and that's that...
but no, they have to be out of the box..."

Why, exactly, is that the case?

[magilus (magilus)]

I also had to remove

> InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
> InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
> InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"

:::.

Removing the wacom entries also fixes KDE applications showing

>X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 169
> Major opcode: 147
> Minor opcode: 3
> Resource id: 0x0
>Failed to open device
>X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 169
> Major opcode: 147
> Minor opcode: 3
> Resource id: 0x0
>Failed to open device

The question is, how can we prevent Xorg from adding such entries and how can we keep hardware support for tabletpcs up and running.

Globally, something has to be done replacing Xorg's traditional .conf way, for example having if conditions. But this has to be solved upstream.

[magilus (magilus)]

> Why, exactly, is that the case?
I think it's for tablet users to have out of the box tablet support. But that's without warranty ;-)

[Tony Rick (tonyr-hevanet)]

>I think it's for tablet users to have out of the box tablet >support. But that's without warranty ;-)

Why would tablet users get special consideration?
xorg configuration missed my Synaptics touchpad in
Edgy, but not in Dapper. I want special consideration,
too.

[magilus (magilus)]

> xorg configuration missed my Synaptics touchpad in Edgy, but not in Dapper.
Please, look if a bug report exists and if this is not the case, please create one.

> Why would tablet users get special consideration?
You can plug a tablet in and out which you can't do very easily with a touchpad.

[Constantine Evans (cevans)]

The configuration in xorg.conf specifically breaks tablet support for tablet users by having ForceDevice ISDV4. These lines are to support tablet *PCs* that use wacom's interface.

[Constantine Evans (cevans)]

I am going to be a bit brave here and reject this, since it seems to be an intentional decision by the Xorg team. If the inclusion is causing a specific problem, then you should file a bug about the problem. Feel free to reopen this if I am incorrect in my reasoning.

Unfortunately, the underlying cause of all of this is that xorg.conf just doesn't work well with hotplugging, and the configuration system of Xorg will eventually need to be redone entirely, which will fix all problems of this sort.