Wacom Tablet Support Might Be Axed From Qt 5

[GreatEmerald]

Hmm, what does this support add, if the tablets can be used as pointers anyway?

[XorEaxEax]

I have to ask, like e8hffff I have a Wacom Bamboo (touch) and it works perfectly, I can use it the second I enter X, I can also use the xsetwacom command to adjust alot of properties etc. Now my question is what exactly does the Wacom support Qt and GTK have to provide relate too? From what I gather the driver and input interface is handled by the kernel/X.

And although the programs I use with my Wacom won't be affected by this (MyPaint, Inkscape, Gimp and Blender), like someone else mentioned KDE does have Krita which seems like a nice drawing program which would became much less useful should it lack Wacom support.

[Sverro2]

If QT is the framework used in the future, no tablets are supported in the future? Let's say Adobe plans to port Photoshop to Linux (which seems rather... unlikely at the moment), they can't use QT?

I use Blender, Gimp, Mypaint AND .... Krita, with my wacom tablet on ... Kubuntu Linux. If they remove support for tablets, Linux will never be a full replacement to Windows. (don't get me wrong, I've been using Linux for everything, full time, for 6 years now).
Just recently Krita became a great platform for drawing, a program with a lot of potential. Something that really seems professional.
Now support for tablets is planned to be dropped?

If that happens Krita will become unusable, which is rather unbearable for me. That means new software on Linux becomes less powerful for me, a Linux user.
So much work has gone into development of Krita...

I am not the only one. I personally know 3 other people (friends), who use Kubuntu, with Wacom tablets, because of me recommending it :/.

[Temar]

Hmm, what does this support add, if the tablets can be used as pointers anyway?

A unified interface over all plattforms for pressure support.

Being able to use your tablet as a pointer is only one aspect, having pressure support like with a real pencil is the more important feature.

Even if Qt drops Wacom support you will still be able to access these devices, but then you will have to do it manually using the X11 interface. Compared to proper support by the toolkit, the X11 interface is a pain in the ass, as it only provides low level access.

Dropping Wacom support is a huge mistake as it will drive away the few professional artists we have on the Linux plattform. Who will do all the artwork for OSS projects in the future? Linux is already lacking artists who are willing to participate in OSS development. If you take away their tools, there will be even less.

[GreatEmerald]

All right, but then why is it so difficult to support it, if it's just an abstraction layer? It shouldn't break so much and definitely shouldn't interfere with other parts of Qt...

[Temar]

All right, but then why is it so difficult to support it, if it's just an abstraction layer?

I don't think it's difficult (at least the Linux side isn't), it seems to be a lack of manpower. No one is willing to implement it and (more important) no one is willing to test it on each Qt release.

It shouldn't break so much and definitely shouldn't interfere with other parts of Qt...

I agree.

[XorEaxEax]

Dropping Wacom support is a huge mistake as it will drive away the few professional artists we have on the Linux plattform. Who will do all the artwork for OSS projects in the future? Linux is already lacking artists who are willing to participate in OSS development. If you take away their tools, there will be even less.

Ehh, this just applies to Qt right? Inkscape, MyPaint and Gimp all rely on GTK, and while I've heard nice things about Krita I'd say both Gimp (obviously) and MyPaint has a larger userbase. Obvously that doesn't mean this is a good thing, just hardly something that will 'drive away the few artists' as it only affects Krita.

[bug77]

Meh, Linux DEs don't even support ICC profiles, you have to set them per application. You have to be pretty masochistic to choose Linux for serious graphics work in the first place.

[89c51]

Meh, Linux DEs don't even support ICC profiles, you have to set them per application. You have to be pretty masochistic to choose Linux for serious graphics work in the first place.

Isn't this what colord is trying to solve?? I don't know how much its integrated in DEs other than Gnome though.

[Temar]

Ehh, this just applies to Qt right? Inkscape, MyPaint and Gimp all rely on GTK, and while I've heard nice things about Krita I'd say both Gimp (obviously) and MyPaint has a larger userbase. Obvously that doesn't mean this is a good thing, just hardly something that will 'drive away the few artists' as it only affects Krita.

http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html

GIMP 2.8 relies on a newer version of GTK+2 that unfortunately has partially broken support for graphics tablets such as Wacom. If your graphic tablet doesn't work in GIMP 2.8 as it should, we recommend downgrading to 2.6 until we release GIMP 3.0 that relies on GTK+3 which has fully functional support for advanced input devices.


I really hope Gimp 3.0 won't take as long as 2.8....