Pen tablet/digitizer support VisualWorks

Dear Smalltalkers,

is there support in VW for Pen Tablets?

Thanks in advance,

Paulo R. Dellani

Hi,

I am working under Linux. The Pen Tablet  model  name
is "Bamboo", from Wacom, which has pretty good support
under Linux/X-Window. Programs like "The Gimp", through
the eXtended Input (XInput) interface from X, can make
use of its "stylus" and "eraser" tools, recognizing different
levels of pressure from them over the tablet and responding
accordingly.

Looking at the documentation side of InputState class,
(InputState class)>>hostEvents, I found that "The 10th field
of a Smalltalk event contains an UninterpretedBytes, which
is the host input event that the VM received that caused it to
post an event".  This means that under X the XEvent data
is accessible to Smalltalk code, and I thought I could read
from this the pressure of the pointing device, and that
this information could be present in the MouseMovedEvent
object instances sent to the controller of an application (a
change of the pressure can be/is interpreted as a pointer
motion). However, I found out that extended data is not
present on the XEvent received by the VM. I think, this
is so because the VM  actually does not use the eXtended
Input interface from X. Am I correct? So, since I don't have
the source code of the VM in order to change it accordingly,
what should I do to get XInput supported under VW? May
be an "eXtended Input event catcher" running parallel to
the VM?

Thanks in advance,

Paulo R. Dellani

On Jan 22, 2008 5:58 AM, Sudhakar wrote:

I don't know whether this will help much for your situation but nonetheless: I have no experience with Linux or Windows but VisualWorks works nicely with both the built-in on-screen keyboard and the hand-writing recognition of Windows CE/Windows Mobile: obviously they translate to "normal" keystrokes. With the "ce.pcl" parcel from the "parcels" directory we added further the possibility to interpret the holding down of the stylus for more than a second as a call to open the context menu. Maybe a look at that code will help you.

Apropos code: for those who aren't aware of it: with the commercial license you get the vm code. Then you could check the C code and adapt and compile your own vm if necessary.

HTH
Helge

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Paulo [mailto:[hidden email]]
Gesendet: Dienstag, 22. Januar 2008 17:37
An: VisualWorks Non-Commercial
Betreff: Re: Pen tablet/digitizer support VisualWorks

Hi,

I am working under Linux. The Pen Tablet  model  name is "Bamboo", from Wacom, which has pretty good support under Linux/X-Window. Programs like "The Gimp", through the eXtended Input (XInput) interface from X, can make use of its "stylus" and "eraser" tools, recognizing different levels of pressure from them over the tablet and responding accordingly.

Looking at the documentation side of InputState class, (InputState class)>>hostEvents, I found that "The 10th field of a Smalltalk event contains an UninterpretedBytes, which is the host input event that the VM received that caused it to post an event".  This means that under X the XEvent data is accessible to Smalltalk code, and I thought I could read from this the pressure of the pointing device, and that this information could be present in the MouseMovedEvent object instances sent to the controller of an application (a change of the pressure can be/is interpreted as a pointer motion). However, I found out that extended data is not present on the XEvent received by the VM. I think, this is so because the VM  actually does not use the eXtended Input interface from X. Am I correct? So, since I don't have the source code of the VM in order to change it accordingly, what should I do to get XInput supported under VW? May be an "eXtended Input event catcher" running parallel to the VM?

Thanks in advance,

Paulo R. Dellani

On Jan 22, 2008 5:58 AM, Sudhakar wrote: