Mac Pro and Linux

Wacom tablet configuration
October 27, 2007

This is not Mac Pro specific, but has been bugging me for years. This is on a default Ubuntu installation, but has happened to me also on Redhat 8+. Fedora 1-8 and Debian 3+.

For a few seconds the tablet seems to work fine, whenever I get closer to the physical edge of the tablet, the cursor on the screen gets close to the border of the screen. After a minute or so this changes and the cursor stops an inch (this varies with time) before the edge even though the pen is already at the phsyical edge of the tablet. The only way to fix is to quickly swipe to the opposite end of the tablet and than back. This resets the mapping. You can imagine how unbelievable annoying this is if you have to do this a thousand times a day.

The fix is simple (took me a long time to figure out though): you have to set the borders of the tablet explicitly in the xorg.conf file.

1. Make a copy of your original xorg.conf file
   

   cd /etc/X11
   sudo cp xorg.conf xorg.conf-backup-beforewacomchange

2. Edit the new xorg.conf
   

   nano xorg.conf

3. Look for a section called "InputDevice" that contains a Driver called "wacom". Make sure it says the following:
   

   Section "InputDevice"
   Driver "wacom"
   Identifier "stylus"
   Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
   Option "Type" "stylus"
   Option "USB" "on"
   Option "TopX" "100"
   Option "TopY" "100"
   Option "BottomX" "20300"
   Option "BottomY" "16200"
   EndSection
   Section "InputDevice"
   Driver "wacom"
   Identifier "stylus"
   Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
   Option "Type" "stylus"
   Option "USB" "on"
   Option "TopX" "100"
   Option "TopY" "100"
   Option "BottomX" "20300"
   Option "BottomY" "16200"
   EndSection
   

4. Inside the section called "ServerLayout", make sure you have these two lines:
   

   InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
   InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"

5. And also make sure that the ServerLayout section is the last section in the file, otherwise this will not work (as it is referencing other sections).
6. Done!

Important: This is tested on Wacom Intuos USB A5 tablet. If you have a different model, than you may have to change the USB option and/or the X,Y coordinates.

Posted byvfxdude at 2:53 PM  

Labels: border, edge, intuos, linux, mac pro, macpro, stuck, ubuntu, usb, wacom, xorg.conf

0 comments:

Post a Comment