TabletPCs

From openSUSE

Note, this does not address USB Wacom tablets. If you are interested in USB tablets, like Intuos and Graphire, see the Wacom USB tablet howto

Tablet PCs - Facts, Hardware etc.

Working with Tablet PCs

openSUSE comes with support for Tablet PCs. Learn how to install and configure your Tablet PC and discover some useful Linux applications which accept input from digital pens.

The following Tablet PCs are supported (with openSUSE 11.1, older releases may differ):

• Tablet PCs with serial Wacom devices, such as:
  • ACER TM C30x series
  • Fujitsu Lifebook T series (T30xx/T40xx/T50xx)
  • Gateway C-140X/E-295C
  • HP Compaq TC1100/TC4200/TC4400, 2710p/2730p
  • IBM/Lenovo X41t/X60t/X61t
  • LG LT20
  • Motion M1200/M1400
  • OQO 02
  • Panasonic Toughbook CF-18
  • Toshiba Portege/Tecra M series, Satellite R15/R20

• Tablet PCs with Wacom USB devices, such as:
  • ASUS R1E/R1F
  • Gateway C-120X/E-155C
  • HP Pavilion tx2000/tx2100/tx2500 series

• Tablet PCs with FinePoint devices, such as:
  • Gateway C210X/M280E/CX2724
  • HP Compaq TC1000.

• Tablet PCs with touch screen devices, such as:
  • Asus R2H
  • Clevo TN120R
  • Fujitsu Siemens Computers P-Series
  • LG C1
  • Samsung Q1/Q1-Ultra

After you have installed the Tablet PC packages and configured your digitizer correctly, input with the pen, also called a stylus, can be used for the following actions and applications:

• Logging in to KDM or GDM
• Unlocking your screen on the KDE and GNOME desktops
• Actions that can also be triggered by other pointing devices (such as mouse or touchpad), for example, moving the cursor on the screen, starting applications, closing, resizing and moving windows, shifting window focus, dragging and dropping objects
• Using gesture recognition in applications of the X Window System
• Drawing with graphical applications as e.g. The GIMP
• Taking notes or sketching with applications like Jarnal or Xournal or editing larger amounts of text with Dasher

Installation and Configuration

During installation of openSUSE, the pen cannot be used as an input device. If your Tablet PC does not feature a built-in keyboard or touch pad, connect anexternal keyboard or mouse to your Tablet PC for installation of your system.

Installing Tablet PC Packages

The packages needed for Tablet PCs are included in the TabletPC installation pattern (on openSUSE/SLED <= 11.0 they are included in the Laptop patter). If this is selected during installation, the following packages should already be installed on your system:

• cellwriter: a character-based hardwriting input panel
• jarnal: a Java-based note taking application
• xournal: an application for note taking and sketching
• xstroke: a gesture recognition program for the X Window System
• xvkbd: a virtual keyboard for the X Window System

Depending on your hardware you need:

• wacom-kmp(-default): the kernel driver for Tablet PCs with USB Wacom devices
• x11-input-wacom: the X input module for Wacom tablets
• x11-input-wacom-tools: configuration, diagnostics, and libraries for Wacom tablets
• x11-input-evtouch: the X input module for some Tablet PCs with touchscreens
• x11-input-fujitsu: the X input module for Fujitsu P-Series tablets
• xorg-x11-driver-input: the package should be always be installed and contains e.g. the fpit driver needed for Gateway tablets.

Additional Packages There is a special repository in the openSUSE buildservice with additional or extended packages for Tablet PCs you may find useful: TabletPC/Laptop-Repository. This repository contains also packages which weren't included in older (open)SUSE releases. Some additional packages: fsc_btns-kmp: a kernel modul for Fujitsu Siemens machines, which enable additional buttons and emit a event if the tablet get rotated kvkbd: a xvkbd like virtual keyboard for KDE The repository is not official supported by SUSE, but you can report problems via openSUSE bugzilla if you assign them to dkukawka at novell dot com and against the Mobile component. Also reports about working xorg.conf for other Tablet PCs models to Danny Kukawka would be appreciated.

If these packages are not installed, manually install the packages you need from command line or select the TabletPC pattern for installation in YaST.

Configuring Your Tablet Device

After the tablet PC packages have been installed, configure the tablet device with SaX2:

1. Start SaX2 from the command line or by pressing Alt + F2 and entering sax2.
2. If you use a Wacom device, click Tablet to show the Tablet Properties. If you use the Fujitsu P-Series, click Touchscreen instead.
3. From the list on the right, select the vendor and the name of your tablet and check Activate This Tablet.
4. Switch to the Electronic Pens tab and make sure the following options are activated: Add Pen and Add Eraser.
5. Click OK to save the changes.

After finishing the X Window System configuration, restart your X server by loggingout. Alternatively, leave the user interface and run init 3 && init 5 in a virtual console.

After your tablet device has been configured, you can now make use of your pen as input device.

openSUSE 11.1

If you use serial Wacom device under openSUSE 11.1 you will probably need to change Connection Port in SaX2, which is by default set to COM-1 [ /dev/ttyS0 ]. You can do this in 'Port and Mode' tab. In most cases the correct Connection port for serial Wacom tablet should be COM-5 [ /dev/ttyS4 ].

Using your Tablet PC

Using alternative input methodes

The Virtual Keyboard

To log in to the KDE or GNOME desktop or to unlock the screen, you can either enter your username and password as usual or via the virtual keyboard, xvkbd, displayed below the login field. To configure the keyboard or to access the integrated help, click the xvkbd field at the left lower corner to open the xvkbd main menu.

If you want to use xvkbd after login, start it from the main menu or with xvkbd from a shell.

Alternatives Depending on your desktop environment, there are other virtual keyboards available as e.g. for KDE viki and kvkbd (see TabletPC/Laptop-Repository) or for GNOME gok. By default xvkbd is used because it work with all X11 based environments.

Gesture Recognition

With xstroke, you can use gestures with your pen or other pointing devices as input for applications on the X Window System. The xstroke alphabet is a unistroke alphabet that resembles the Graffiti I alphabet. When activated, xstroke sends the input to the currently focused window.

1. Start xstroke from the main menu or with xstroke from a shell. This adds a pencil icon to your system tray.
2. Start the application for which you want to create text input with the pen (for example, a terminal window, a text editor, or an OpenOffice.org Writer).
3. To activate the gesture recognition mode, click the pencil icon once.
4. Perform some gestures on the graphics tablet with the pen or another pointing device. xstroke captures the gestures and transfers them to text that appears in the application window that has the focus.
5. To switch focus to a different window, click the desired window with the pen and hold for a moment (or use the keyboard shortcut defined in your desktop's control center).
6. To deactivate the gesture recognition mode, click the pencil icon again.

Dasher

Dasher is another useful application. It was designed for situations where keyboard input is impractical or unavailable. With a bit of training, you can rapidly enter larger amounts of text using only the pen (or other input devices—it can even be driven with an eye tracker).

Start Dasher from the main menu or with dasher from a shell. Move your pen in one direction and the application starts to zoom into the letters on the right side. From the letters passing the cross hairs in the middle, the text is created or predicted and is printed to the upper part of the window. To stop or start writing, click the display once with the pen. Modify the zooming speed at the bottom of the window.

The Dasher concept works for many languages. For more information, refer to the Dasher Web site, which offers comprehensive documentation, demonstrations and training texts. Find it at [1]

Rotating Your Display

When rotating your Tablet PC monitor, the orientation of your display and of yourgraphics tablet is not automatically adjusted. For the KDE desktop, use KRandRTray to rotate or resize your display manually on the fly.

Hardware specials Not all driver for Tablet devices support this feature at the moment. Because of this the behavior can differ. It is tested and should work with Wacom tablets.

KRandRTray is a KDE applet forthe RANDR extension of the X server.

1. Start KRandRTray from the main menu or with krandrtray from a shell. This adds the KRandRTray icon to your system tray.
2. To rotate your display, click the icon and select the desired orientation from the context menu. Your display is immediately tilted to the new direction. The orientation of the graphics tablet changes also so it can still interpret the movement of the pen correctly.

GNOME The related Gnome tool to change the rotation can not handle the rotation of Wacom devices at the moment. We are working on it.

Taking Notes and Sketching with the Pen

To create drawings with the pen, you can use a professional graphics editor like The GIMP or try one of the note taking applications, Xournal or Jarnal. With both Xournal and Jarnal, you can take notes, create drawings, or comment PDF files with the pen. As a Java-based application available for several platforms, Jarnal also offers basic collaboration features. For more information, refer to [2]. When saving your contents, Jarnal stores the data in an archive format (*.jaj) that also contains a file in SVG format.

Start Jarnal or Xournal from the main menu or by entering jarnal or xournal in a shell. To comment a PDF file in Xournal, for example, select File > Annotate PDF and open the PDF file from your file system. Use the pen or another pointing device to annotate the PDF then save your changes with File > Print to PDF.

Troubleshooting

Virtual Keyboard Does Not Appear on Login Screen

Occasionally, the virtual keyboard is not displayed on the login screen. To solve this, restart the X server by pressing Ctrl + Alt + <— twice or press the appropriate key on your Tablet PC (if you use a slate model without integrated keyboard). If the virtual keyboard still does not show, connect an external keyboard to your slate model and log in using the hardware keyboard.

Orientation of the Tablet does not change

With the xrandr command, you can change the orientation of your display from within a shell. Enter xrandr --help to view the options available. To simultaneously change the orientation of your graphics tablet, the command needs to be modified as described below:

SLED10 and openSUSE 10.2/10.3

For normal orientation (0° rotation)

xrandr -o 0 && xsetwacom set "Mouse[7]" Rotate 0

For 90° rotation (clockwise, portrait)

xrandr -o 3 && xsetwacom set "Mouse[7]" Rotate 1

For 180° rotation (landscape)

xrandr -o 2 && xsetwacom set "Mouse[7]" Rotate 3

For 270° rotation (counterclockwise, portrait)

xrandr -o 1 && xsetwacom set "Mouse[7]" Rotate 2

openSUSE 11.0 (and newer)

First check via xrandr which you internal (active) display is. In this case it's LVDS (on a Lenovo ThinkPad X61t).

For normal orientation (0° rotation)

xrandr --output LVDS --rotate normal && xsetwacom set "Mouse[7]" Rotate NONE

For 90° rotation (clockwise, portrait)

xrandr --output LVDS --rotate right && xsetwacom set "Mouse[7]" Rotate CW

For 180° rotation (landscape)

xrandr --output LVDS --rotate inverted && xsetwacom set "Mouse[7]" Rotate HALF

For 270° rotation (counterclockwise, portrait)

xrandr --output LVDS --rotate left && xsetwacom set "Mouse[7]" Rotate CCW

Note that the commands above depend on the contents of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file. If you have configured your device with SaX2 as described in “Configuring Your Tablet Device”, the commands should work as they are written. If you have changed the Identifier of the tablet stylus input device in xorg.conf manually, replace "Mouse[7]" with the new Identifier.

openSUSE 11.2

However, although, since HCL/Laptops/HP#tx_XXXX_xx, for instance, and what was said above, implies the using of sax2 or that the content of /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file is taken straightforwardly, the user of openSuSE 11.2 could be puzzled at the sight that, in despite of sax2 or the direct editing of /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file, the actual behavior of the X server ignores the devices identifiers set in the configuration file, so, xrandr might complaint of unknowing the device name introduced. It is due to the new dynamical X server configuration, which would provide a hot pluggable configuration of input and output (i/o) devices. It also makes a such historic tool as sax2 obsolete (vid. http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2009-12/msg00017.html). So, openSuSE 11.2 no longer rely on a static X configuration, although the X server could read xorg.conf if available.

Things could be hard whether wacomcpl showed not any devices to configure. (See at [3].)

Where could we find the names of the devices, then?

The name of the Monitor is obtainable from the execution without parameters of xarndr it self. It is an example output:

$ xarndr
LCD connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 261mm x 163mm

The device name of the Stylus is obtainable from the configuration dialog for the extended input devices in GIMP, or from the execution of

$ cat /proc/bus/input/devices

that provides something like this in an HP Pavilion tx2532 Notebook Tablet PC:

[...]
I: Bus=0003 Vendor=056a Product=0093 Version=0403
N: Name="Wacom ISDv4 93"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.5/usb7/7-2/7-2:1.0/input/input7
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse1 event7
B: EV=b
B: KEY=1c03 0 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=1000100001b
[...]
I: Bus=0003 Vendor=056a Product=0093 Version=0403
N: Name="Wacom ISDv4 93"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.5/usb7/7-2/7-2:1.1/input/input9
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=mouse2 event9
B: EV=b
B: KEY=1c03 0 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=1000100001b
[...]

Knowing that, the user could find the frequent introduction of commands into a terminal uncomfortable, so it might want to create the following files using his favorite editor (kwrite, for instance): TabletPC.desktop, in $HOME/Desktop/ (spanish: $HOME/Escritorio/), and TabletPC.sh, in $HOME/bin/. The second one provides a simple GUI using kdialog, while the first one is a KDE application link file for its desktop.

== FILE TabletPC.desktop ($HOME/Desktop/)BEGINS AS FOLLOWS:==

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[es]=Cambiar la orientación de la pantalla y las coordenadas del Stylus al girar la TabletPC.
Comment=Cambiar la orientación de la pantalla y las coordenadas del Stylus al girar la TabletPC.
Exec=$HOME/bin/TabletPC.sh
GenericName[es]=Rotación de la Pantalla y el Stylus
GenericName=Rotación de la Pantalla y el Stylus
Icon=yast-x11
MimeType=
Name[es]=TabletPC
Name=TabletPC
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=
X-SuSE-translate=true

== FILE TabletPC.desktop ($HOME/Desktop/) ENDS IN THE PREVIOUS LINE ==

== FILE TabletPC.sh ($HOME/bin/) BEGINS AS FOLLOWS: ==

#!/bin/bash
# Bash script para cambiar la rotación de la pantalla y las coordenadas del Stylus (lápiz).
# Como la configuración dinámica del servidor X ignora /etc/X11/xorg.conf,
# a falta del auxilio de wacomcpl, el nombre del
# dispositivo de la pantalla se puede obtener de la ejecución no parametrada de xarndr
# [LCD connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 261mm x 163mm],
# y el nombre del Stylus se podría obtener de
# cat /proc/bus/input/devices
# o del diálogo de configuración de
# los dispositivos de entrada extendidos en el GIMP.
# Rainer Hurtado Navarro, vie dic 18 19:42:40 CST 2009.
if [ "`env | grep LANG= | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "=" } { printf $2 }' | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "." } { printf $1 }' | awk 'BEGIN {FS = "_"} { printf $1 }'`" = "es" ]; then kdialog_string="Seleccione: derecha izquierda invertido normal"; else kdialog_string="Select: right left landscape normal";fi
a=`kdialog --title Tablet --combobox $kdialog_string`
ruta_xrandr=`whereis xrandr | awk '{ printf $2 }'`
case $a in
 derecha | right)    $ruta_xrandr --output LCD --rotate right  && xsetwacom set "Wacom ISDv4 93" Rotate CW;;
 invertido | landscape)    $ruta_xrandr --output LCD --rotate inverted  && xsetwacom set "Wacom ISDv4 93" Rotate HALF;;
 izquierda | left)    $ruta_xrandr --output LCD --rotate left  && xsetwacom set "Wacom ISDv4 93" Rotate CCW;;
 normal)    $ruta_xrandr --output LCD --rotate normal  && xsetwacom set "Wacom ISDv4 93" Rotate NONE;;
esac
exit 0

== FILE TabletPC.sh ($HOME/bin/) ENDS IN THE PREVIOUS LINE ==

The device names used in the exampla are intend for an HP Pavilion tx2532 Notebook Tablet PC, were obtained as it was suggested, and have to be changed for the proper names according the particular cases. Concerning the missfunctioning of wacomcpl, the solution is to upgrade packages x11-input-wacom and x11-input-wacom-tools from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/XOrg/openSUSE_11.2/ After that, the devices will appear in the Wacom Control Panel. (You might see at [4] and at [5].) However, after an X server restart/reboot, the device names will shift to stylus and eraser, which are, coincidently, the names I gave them in my xorg.conf file. So, do not forget to change the device names of your input devices as they are shown in wacomcpl after the X server restart/reboot in the TabletPC.sh script in order it to work, Else, the screen indeed will rotate but not the relationship with the input devices, which are going to behave as if the screen rotation were normal, as it takes place using the krandrtray, or the ATI Catalyst Control Center or akind utility provided by the proprietary driver, or the xrandr command alone.