[geeks] graphics tablet

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 09:25:42PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> I need a graphics tablet to work with image editors.
> 
> Needs to be compatible with Linux at least, preferrably also FreeBSD.
> 
> I'd like to hear from anyone who is using one with a program like
> "The Gimp".

I've used a couple different models of serial wacom tablets with Linux.
USB is supposed to work as well.  I believe that support (at least for
serial units) is a X issue rather than an OS issue.

Setting up the wacom tablet in Xfree86 was easy.  It looks just as easy
under Xorg, but I haven't tried it yet.  

When last I did that, running Debian, I then had to recompile GTK for
Xinput support, and then recompile the gimp against the new GTK.  The
tablet would work, but the gimp couldn't use presure sentitivity or
understand that the eraser was different from the tip without it.
Hopefully some distributions would have the major toolkits compiled with
Xinput support by default by now.  Back when I did it, recompiling GTK
wasn't hard as it was back in the 1.x days.  It looks much more painful
to have to recompile it now.

BTW, I could never get the Gimp on Irix or Windows to support presure.
Apparently GTK on windows doesn't support windows presure support, and
while Gtk on irix is supposed to support the irix xserver's input
extensions, I couldn't get it figure out.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/