Wacom Tablet Support Might Be Axed From Qt 5

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wacom Tablet Support Might Be Axed From Qt 5

While Wacom tablets command most of the graphics tablet market-share, within the open-source Qt world it seems not many people actually care about these input devices. Wacom support -- after being pressed by many long-standing open bugs -- is being talked about for removal from Qt 5.0...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTE3OTU

[curaga]

The usual conundrum of no dev being able to draw (and thus owning a tablet) and no artist being able to code.

FWIW, it seems it's not much more rosy on the gtk side, with tablets being broken in gimp 2.8 with gtk2 I hear.

[schmidtbag]

I just don't really understand how it breaks so easy. How do they not realize by now the things that would cause breakage after every release? To me, that's like cooking on the stove and you somehow keep forgetting to not put your hand on the surface, so you just decide to use the microwave instead.


Anyways, considering that not many people have these tablets and even less of these people use linux, I'm surprised there was ever support for them to begin with. TBH, I'm not really sure what programs even take advantage of their advanced features. While I'm not saying that support should be removed, I don't see who really needs it ATM. I feel like if the Adobe suite were to be ported to linux, then these drivers should get more attention.

[89c51]

I just don't really understand how it breaks so easy. How do they not realize by now the things that would cause breakage after every release? To me, that's like cooking on the stove and you somehow keep forgetting to not put your hand on the surface, so you just decide to use the microwave instead.


Anyways, considering that not many people have these tablets and even less of these people use linux, I'm surprised there was ever support for them to begin with. TBH, I'm not really sure what programs even take advantage of their advanced features. While I'm not saying that support should be removed, I don't see who really needs it ATM. I feel like if the Adobe suite were to be ported to linux, then these drivers should get more attention.

Regardless of how many people actually use linux creative tools (gimp inkscape etc) support for popular devices like wacom tablets is a must if you want these programs -and linux- to gain traction.

[Temar]

Regardless of how many people actually use linux creative tools (gimp inkscape etc) support for popular devices like wacom tablets is a must if you want these programs -and linux- to gain traction.

I agree completely.

Allthough I have to add that removing wacom support from Qt does not mean there is no wacom support at all in Linux. You can still use Xinput directly to access these devices. It's not as comfortable as having native (& cross-plattform compatible) support from your toolkkit, but it works.

[schmidtbag]

Regardless of how many people actually use linux creative tools (gimp inkscape etc) support for popular devices like wacom tablets is a must if you want these programs -and linux- to gain traction.

I agree and have thought of this myself, but then I realized that commercial creative tools would have been ported by now if anyone seriously cared. The wacom drivers have been around for a very long time in a linux perspective. These tablets aren't a necessity for creative tools to be ported, but creative tools are a necessity for these tablets to have a reason to be maintained. If linux just keeps the bare minimum support for these tablets (meaning, they can at least be used as pointer devices), then I feel like that's all that really matters until something professional comes along.

I have no problem with anyone feeling the need to keep these drivers fully up-to-date with all features that Windows offers, but I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do it when there's almost nobody using them for their intended purposes.

[Adarion]

Regardless of how many people actually use linux creative tools (gimp inkscape etc) support for popular devices like wacom tablets is a must if you want these programs -and linux- to gain traction.

The usual conundrum of no dev being able to draw (and thus owning a tablet) and no artist being able to code.

Nicely put.
I have a tablet that I use from time to time and it would be sad if things stopped working. The question is, can Wacom do something about it or is it a pure matter of Qt or GTK?
And when the wacoms are broken then probably the others are too.

And it is not even just krita, GIMP or inkscape which would benefit from working tablets, these newer tablets can also act like touchpads.

[makomk]

Anyways, considering that not many people have these tablets and even less of these people use linux, I'm surprised there was ever support for them to begin with. TBH, I'm not really sure what programs even take advantage of their advanced features. While I'm not saying that support should be removed, I don't see who really needs it ATM. I feel like if the Adobe suite were to be ported to linux, then these drivers should get more attention.

I think Krita may have been getting some use from artistic types, though that's presumably not going to last if Qt stops supporting tablets altogether.

[squirrl]

MyPaint uses it.



QT and GNOME think they are major players similar to Microsoft. All they will do is drive people away.

I use a Wacom tablet.

Back in the 90's free software complained how Microsoft was buggy and crashed basically all the time.
It's 2012, why is Xwindows/Kde/Gnome crashing all the time.

"Neopunk crashed unexpectedly"

"Some application quit unexpectedly, send bug report?"

I keep looking for the message, "Mistakes were made." ala Call of Duty - Black Op's.

[e8hffff]

Idiots. Why talk about destroying something already 99% of the work is done.

I use a Wacom Bamboo to draw and sketch for design concepts, and it works perfectly with MyPaint.