Rotating 7-inch Touch Display is a mess -- needs proper research then update of config-tools and then new instructions in doc

[jdg71nl]

(this is my "first create-issue", so please help if forget something)

I am using the 7-inch Touch Display accessory for many years now, for both business and personal projects, and I am always fighting with the "change-orientation" settings.

The two most popular display housing options (Multicomp and Pibow) both "force" you to install the display upside-down, relative to the housing if sitting on a flat surface, or desk.
The best solution would be for the housing to allow hardware installation/mounting in 2 positions (0 and 180 degrees).
But that is not the case, so we are stuck with software-rotation.

I have seen and used the rotation settings in the official website:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/accessories/display.html
https://github.com/raspberrypi/documentation/blob/develop/documentation/asciidoc/accessories/display/display_intro.adoc

But I always end-up with either the text/console being 180-rotated, and the GUI not.
Or reverse.
And then there is the issue of the touch-interface rotation being independent from the display-rotation.
And finally, the VNC-server does not "follow" the display-rotation.

I realize that fixing this issue, is foremost the addition/update of the driver config (in cmdline.txt or config.txt), more that just an update of this doc.
But how do I file an github-issue for the correct "7-inch Touch Display" driver (-config) ?

This is a screen-recording of VNC with the pointer being reversed:

d231229-JDG-Screen-Recording--VNC-pointer-reversed.mp4

[6by9]

Setting video=DSI-1:800x480@60,rotate=180 in cmdline.txt will invert the console by setting rotation on the primary plane for that output. However currently Wayfire doesn't reset that option, so you end up with the background plane rotated when the cursor plane isn't.
There is a one line fix for that to a package called wlroots that will resolve that. I've created the patch in the mainline project, and that should ripple through to Raspberry Pi OS fairly quickly. With that you should be able to use both the cmdline.txt setting and the Screen Configuration app in Wayfire and get consistent results.

Wayfire will want the touch matching the default orientation of the display itself. When assigned to a display, transforms on the display will also be reflected in the touch input as well. I believe you can insert a custom transform in libinput/Wayfire, but it just becomes more complex.
Inverting the touch via device tree is going to cause grief against Wayfire. When in the console there is no standard user of touch events, so largely touch there is redundant. If using a library to take touch events, then generally those have a mechanism to handle inverting to match the display output, and that should really be investigated instead of changing DT.

WayVNC reversing the mouse pointer looks to be a bug in (probably) WayVNC, as I've reproduced that using TigerVNC as the viewer. It's for any rotated display not just the DSI panel, so implies that something is passing around co-ordinates/pointer movements without having checked for transforms first.
There is a wayvnc issue that appears identical from 2020, but claims to have been resolved. That was against sway and wlroots, so potentially it's reoccurred in Wayfire.

[aallan]

@nathan-contino Can you insert the core of the above 👆 into the documentation on the 7-inch Display!

[6by9]

I will say that we are looking at whether there is a more uniform way of configuring rotation over the various display options, but it's not a totally straight-forward task.

[nathan-contino]

@aallan The cmdline.txt is already in the doc. Do we have any other concrete solutions for this problem besides waiting for Wayfire and wayvnc to fix the issue, and waiting for the wlroots fix to percolate down to Raspberry Pi OS?

I prefer not to document known bugs, but this issue seems persistent enough that we might need to add something to the docs about debugging and fixing it. Is there a known and working temporary solution to invert input via device tree, or (preferably) invert input via touch input library?

I would like to add more information to the docs about this, but I'd like to avoid adding a paragraph without an actionable solution. Even if it's not necessarily the cleanest or best solution right now.

[aallan]

Sounds like a question for @6by9 if the cmdline.txt stuff has already made its way into the documentation, is there anywhere we should be pointing folks with questions around the 7-inch Display and rotation? Github issue, Forum thread perhaps? At minimum, it'd be good to add a NOTE block which says "There is a know bug where foobar, for more information see xyzzy."

[6by9]

We have the Official Display subforum at https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewforum.php?f=108
The sticky FAQ there is hideously out of date, but a new sticky would probably be the most sensible thing to cover known issues.
Otherwise the bookworm-feedback repo generally catches other issues.

cmdline.txt is in there, but recommends using the dtoverlay invx and inxy overrides to flip the display. That ought to be caveated on not involving any window manager, and ideally to use whatever input transformation facilities there are in the chosen input library rather than inverting at the driver level.
There's also no clear separation between "this applies for GUIs" vs "this is console only".

[JamesH65]

If you can write a new sticky, I'll remove the old one (presuming there is nothing left in there of interest)

[videoman]

This is still an issue with Raspberry pi and WayVNC
/etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

dpkg -l of wayvnc package.
ii wayvnc 0.8.0-rc0-2 arm64 VNC server for wlroots-based Wayland compositors

/boot/firmware/cmdline.txt
console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=81e5547f-02 rootfstype=ext4 fsck.repair=yes rootwait quiet splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles video=HDMI-A-1:1280x400@60234,rotate=90

~/.config/wayfire.ini
[output:HDMI-A-1]
mode = 400x1280@60234
position = 0,0
transform = 90

Switching back to X11 server and vncserver (RealVNC) fixes the issue. I believe that this is a wayvnc issue. All local USB and bluetooth mouse movements work as expected on the console/screen. Touch screen also registers correctly. It's just the VNC session that has reversed X and Y mappings. Before I upgrade the wayvnc service, upon connect it would show the orientation off by 90 degrees before it would do a screen refresh. Once the screen refreshed, it would then show the correct orientation. After wayvnc upgrade to 0.8.0-rc0-2 upon connection it would now show the right screen orientation upon connect. Still has reversed X and Y mouse movements.

I was hoping to find documentation in wayvnc on the config file to reverse the mouse movements, but did not see anything in the config documentation for that.