USB Tablets with Touch

USB tablets with touch include USB tablet PCs and the Bamboo Pen & Touch series of tablets. Because their stylus/eraser & touch or touch/pad are exported as two separate kernel devices they have some idiosyncrasies we'll explore briefly. BambooPT examples will be shown because except for the pad (tablet buttons) they also apply to a USB tablet PC. See also Touch Arbitration in the kernel driver wiki.

X servers 1.8 & 1.9

Usually only one snippet is enough as you cannot configure dependent devices. The USB devices with touch appear to be an exception, but that's only because their touch is a separate device.

The following example shows a BambooPT 52-wacom-options.conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d with two snippets for the two different devices. A more detailed discussion of 52-wacom-options.conf use is given in xorg.conf.d. Notice the ''Driver "wacom"'' line is not needed and a suitable ''Identifier'' is chosen. Identify each input tool's device name with xsetwacom. This will let you determine what keyword(s) will be useful for a match. In this case the device "Pen" has stylus as the parent and eraser as the dependent tool. For "Finger" touch is the parent and pad the dependent tool. Separate Options valid for each device are applied.

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "Wacom Bamboo Presscurve and Area configurations"
        # Match all Wacom input tools that have "BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Pen" in the "device name".
	MatchProduct "Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Pen"
	MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"

        # Apply a custom configuration options. Any option will also apply to
        # all dependent devices, if applicable. So e.g. the pressure curve will
        # be available on the stylus and the eraser (but not on the pad).
	Option "PressCurve" "0 10 90 100"
	Option "TopX" "0"
	Option "TopY" "0"
	Option "BottomX" "14720"
	Option "BottomY" "9200"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "Wacom Bamboo Finger Area configuration"
        # Match all Wacom input tools that have "BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Finger" in the "device name".
	MatchProduct "Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Finger"
	MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"

        # Apply custom Options to this device below.
	Option "TopX" "0"
	Option "TopY" "0"
	Option "BottomX" "480"
	Option "BottomY" "320"
EndSection

The Wacom Tablet Area settings for touch have no effect of course on the pad.

X server 1.10

Since X server 1.10 supports dependent device configuration we see it is no longer really relevant that there are two devices. The distinction essentially disappears since specifying unique input tool keywords will pick up both device's input tools just like multiple input tools on one device. And because the kernel is exporting the parent devices as Pen and Finger, the parent device matching limitation of X server 1.10 (brought about by the xf86-input-wacom driver appending the type after the match has been applied), can apparently be avoided. Provided the match is made to Pen and Finger rather than stylus and touch.

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "Wacom Bamboo stylus options"
        MatchDriver "wacom"
        MatchProduct "Pen"

        # Apply custom Options to this device below.
	Option "RawSample" "20"
	Option "PressCurve" "0,10,90,100"
	Option "TopX" "-10"
	Option "TopY" "-20"
	Option "BottomX" "14720"
	Option "BottomY" "9200"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "Wacom Bamboo eraser options"
        MatchDriver "wacom"
        MatchProduct "eraser"

        # Apply custom Options to this device below.
	Option "RawSample" "20"
	Option "PressCurve" "5,0,100,95"
	Option "TopX" "-10"
	Option "TopY" "-20"
	Option "BottomX" "14720"
	Option "BottomY" "9200"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "Wacom Bamboo touch options"
        MatchDriver "wacom"
        MatchProduct "Finger"

        # Apply custom Options to this device below.
	Option "ScrollDistance" "18"
	Option "TapTime" "220"
EndSection

Section "InputClass"
	Identifier "Wacom Bamboo pad options"
        MatchDriver "wacom"
        MatchProduct "pad"

        # Apply custom Options to this device below.
	Option "Button1" "1"
	Option "Button2" "3"
	Option "Button3" "2"
	Option "Button4" "0"
EndSection

xorg.conf

See Static xorg.conf Setup for further explanation.

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "stylus"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"    # USB ONLY
  Option        "Type"          "stylus"
  Option        "USB"           "on"                  # USB ONLY
  Option        "Button2"       "2"  # make first button a middle click
  Option        "Button3"       "3"  # make second button a R click
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "eraser"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"    # USB ONLY
  Option        "Type"          "eraser"
  Option        "USB"           "on"                  # USB ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "touch"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom-touch"   # USB ONLY
  Option        "Type"          "touch"
  Option        "USB"           "on"                  # USB ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "pad"                                 # Tablet buttons
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom-touch"   # USB ONLY
  Option        "Type"          "pad"
  Option        "USB"           "on"                  # USB ONLY
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier    "X.org Configured"
  InputDevice   "stylus"
  InputDevice   "eraser"
  InputDevice   "touch"         # For TabletPCs and BambooPTs that support touch
  InputDevice   "pad"   # For Intuos3/Intuos4/CintiqV5/Graphire4/Bamboo/BambooPT
EndSection

Notice the BambooPT pad requires the /dev/input/wacom-touch symlink as it is a dependent device of the parent device touch.

Profiles for USB Touch

A ''Profile'' contains the settings you prefer for a specific program. See Profiles for more detail. Let's write a Gimp profile for a Bamboo Pen and Touch tablet to explore the differences. Because the Bamboo P&T is seen by the system as 2 devices, stylus/eraser & touch/pad, it needs two DEVICE variables unlike the Bamboo script in ''Profiles''. Or you could use vanilla xsetwacom commands as in the Sample Runtime Script. Here you want to turn touch off, because you don't want it on in Gimp and it also frees up a precious button.

#!/bin/bash

DEVICE="Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Pen"
DEVTWO="Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Finger"

STYLUS="$DEVICE stylus"
ERASER="$DEVICE eraser"
TOUCH="$DEVTWO touch"
PAD="$DEVTWO pad"

## Stylus

## Eraser

## Touch (2FGT)
xsetwacom set "$TOUCH" Touch off

## Pad
xsetwacom set "$PAD" Button 1 "key shift ctrl n"  # New layer
xsetwacom set "$PAD" Button 2 "key minus"  # Zoom out
xsetwacom set "$PAD" Button 3 "key shift plus"  # Zoom in
xsetwacom set "$PAD" Button 4 "key control z"  # Undo