Updated Wizardpen Driver (0.7.0-alpha1? :p)

Out of the blue I received an updated source file in my mailbox for the Linux Wizardpen driver from a very nice guy called Mike. The driver itself addresses a significant amount of improvements including optimization for performance, which I was completely astonished and blown away by it as I previously have to deal with sluggishness when painting in a maximized GIMP window.

You can download it from the link below:

(*Note: Yeah, I'm being a stupid dumbass for plugging a version number myself... but I suppose the improvement warrants a major number increment ;)

List of features: (*Note: UNTESTED means I was never able to test it myself, please feedback if you had problems with it)

• Major performance and reliability improvements
• (UNTESTED) Support for bundled scroll-wheel mouse (I know a lot of people wanted this, hence bolded ;)
• Pressure sensitivity now configurable (Xorg param: TopZ and BottomZ; range: 0-1024)
• Reliable button press/release event mechanism (using pressure thresholds)
• (UNTESTED)Support vertical tablet orientation (useful if are using stacked dual monitors and want the tablet layout to the vertical orientation) (Xorg param: Rotate90 - "0" or "1"
• [UNTESTED] Ability to tell driver your screen size in case gets confused (xorg param: ScreenX and ScreenY)
• Debug mode (Xorg parm: debugyn - "0" or "1")

Do have to iterate the fact that Mike should be credited fully for his work and I'm just disseminating this piece of good code :).

Have fun experimenting and post any bugs or issues found!

P/S: The installation steps are already outlined here

(*NOTE: My webhost is acting stupid again, so have to exploit the resources of the "empire" from now :p)

Winamp: It's 1999 all over again!

I have a confession to make: Firewire on Linux sucks! >_<

Despite liking Linux and open source software in general, the only thing that irks me is Firewire/IEEE1394 support: which they never seem to get along with each other at one time or the other, like dysfunctional couples. Or probably it's just the Draconic Apple Empire which decided to screw their firmware so to vow to cause inferno to Linux users (but damn I worship their idol: the iPod).

OK, probably that's a bad joke :p.

Either way, what I used to be able to do it in Hardy (8.04) is to manage my iPod library. What I'm unable to do now with Interpid (8.10) is exactly that: Interpid refuses to mount my humble 3rd-generation iPod. Apparently it is reported that it can be "fixed" by recompiling the kernel without EFI support, but that's something that I'm not willing to do at the moment (mainly due to laziness - I know how long the process would take, coming from a Gentoo background).

So at the moment, it's back to Windows again and having tried out quite a number of players that wasn't iTunes, I find myself using WinAmp. It's sort of a surprise to me and it felt as if I'm back to 1999 (which at that time WinAmp *is* THE player). The few things I liked: support direct drag-and-drop from Explorer to my iPod, read my tags properly and does automatic transcoding (jackpot!). What I don't like about other players: Crashes on me on first run (read: Floola and Froddle Pod), chokes and bloats itself with memory leaks (Songbird), forces me to use a non-intuitive library feature (MediaMonkey) and sluggish UI experience (YamiPod).

Until I can get Intrepid to talk to my iPod and happily reuse gtkpod, guess I'm happy to stick with WinAmp for quite sometime.

And it feels good to feel like you are 17 again :lol:.

No more shitty Chinese/Japanese display font

This is sort of a follow up to my previous blog post on fontconfig, and also part of my efforts in making the EeePC a simple-to-use and pretty (in my own view) PC.

With such a small screen and fonts, complicated Chinese characters will be rendered as unintelligible white space with black dots when using Sung/Ming fonts (宋体，明体). In this case, Gothic/Hei fonts (serif equivalent to East Asian font) are very readable as it is capable to be rendered even with small font sizes. In this case, WenQuanYi's Zen Hei is the best open source Gothic/HeiTi font (and I even highlighted it in one of my post).

For this setup, I make it more simplistic: Copy a good template which specifies preferred Latin fonts (e.g. /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-latin.conf in Debian) to ~/.fonts.conf. Once that's in place: paste <family>WenQuanYi Zen Hei</family> in each <prefer> section.

Once that's in place, execute `fc-cache -fv` and restart your applications, and TADA! browsing Chinese sites on Firefox has never been more enjoyable with unified and readable text :D.

EeePC Wireless Toggle Fn+F2 - Quick Troubleshooting Note

Just installed Debian Lenny to my EeePC 701, after screwing my eeeXubuntu over.

One of the most common Linux gripes about EeePC is the wireless chipset it's using (probably Asus should choose a more compatible from the start ^^||).

Have been spending the whole day trying to get the wifi toggle to work, finally I got it to work. Checklist being as follows:

1. Check whether ath5k is blacklisted or not
2. Check whether "options pciehp pciehp_force=1" was set properly
3. Ensuring pciehp was loaded (best way is to add it to /etc/modules)

With the latest custom, EeePC Lenny installer, item 1 and 2 has been addressed (but no harm double confirming it). So should it not work, try to perform Item 3 and see whether that works for you before you ask the mailing list ;).

Genius Wizardpen with Intrepid Ibex

NOTE

The tutorial currently still works with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

NEWS UPDATE

An updated (though not thoroughly tested) driver is available thanks to Mike! Please find full details by clicking on this link.

UPDATE HISTORY:

21 October 2008

• Original, adapted from my tutorial for Hardy Heron

Obtaining the driver

Option 1: Using a precompiled driver - UNTESTED!!

Miriad have provided a precompiled driver for Hardy and can be obtained from http://specificcrap.arbitrarycrap.com/wizardpen_drv.so. Just download the driver and put it in /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/.

Once that's done, follow the steps outlined in "Configuring and using your Wizardpen".

For the latest version (0.7.0-alpha2): Alternatively, you could use the Debian package done by Giorgo Enrico, which you can download it here http://www.mediafire.com/file/nyzyynygiyy/wizardpen_0.7.0-alpha2_i386.deb

Option 2: Building from source

1. Download the source package: http://specificcrap.arbitrarycrap.com/wizardpen-0.6.0.2.tar.gz
   (or the latest, untested driver here:
   
2. Unpack it somewhere with following command: tar -zxvf wizardpen-0.6.0.2.tar.gz
3. Grab the necessary packages:sudo aptitude install xutils libx11-dev libxext-dev build-essential xautomation xinput xserver-xorg-dev
4. Change directory to where you unpacked the source code: cd wizardpen-0.6.0.2
5. Compile and install the driver: ./configure --with-xorg-module-dir=/usr/lib/xorg/modules && make && sudo make install
6. Verify that the driver is installed correctly (Check for wizardpen_drv.la and wizardpen_drv.so): ls /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/wizardpen_drv.*

Configuring and using your Wizardpen

For Xorg7.3, the recommended way to configure your input device is by adding HAL fdi files, which in turn allows you to hotplug your Wizardpen. This step is not only recommended, it's essentially CRUCIAL in the case of Intrepid Ibex as the xorg.conf method used in my Hardy tutorial WILL NOT WORK.

This new configuration method may be supported by Hardy Heron, but I greatly appreciate anyone who is able to confirm this to me :).

1. Connect your Wizardpen tablet (if you haven't already done so)
2. Find out the name of your tablet : grep -i name /proc/bus/input/devices
3. Double confirm that HAL captured the name of the tablet correctly as well: lshal | less
4. Create a new file with the name /etc/hal/fdi/policy/99-x11-wizardpen.fdi
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
   <deviceinfo version="0.2">
   <device>
   <!-- This MUST match with the name of your tablet -->
   <match key="info.product" contains="NAME OF YOUR TABLE OBTAINED FROM PREVIOUS STEP">
   <merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">wizardpen</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.SendCoreEvents" type="string">true</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.TopX" type="string">5619</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.TopY" type="string">6554</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomX" type="string">29405</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.BottomY" type="string">29671</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.MaxX" type="string">29405</merge>
   <merge key="input.x11_options.MaxY" type="string">29671</merge>
   </match>
   </device>
   </deviceinfo>
   
5. Reboot your computer (*Note: Thanks to Ociosu for the update)
   
6. If X fails to start up, or that the cursor runs amok with unpredictable and unacceptable behaviour (e.g. button mapping screw-ups), I greatly recommend that you start to debug your configuration.

TROUBLESHOOTING - IMPORTANT STEPS:

Should you find your Wizardpen not working yet, check out the /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what went wrong (Search for "EE" and "WW" would give you some important hint). Google and the UbuntuForums are always your friend when it come to troubleshooting things ;).

Calibrating your tablet

1. Execute the following command: lshal | less
2. Search the section with the name of your tablet, as obtained from Step 2 in the configuration step. The line should read something like: info.product = '[Name of your tablet]'
3. Scroll down until you find the following line: linux.device_file = '/dev/input/eventN' (N will a number)
4. The source package contains a program called 'wizardpen-calibrate', which is in the 'calibrate' folder, which actually echoes the appropriate X11 calibration settings
5. Using a terminal/console, execute the calibration program: calibrate/wizardpen-calibrate /dev/input/eventN (*Note: Subtitute /dev/input/eventN with the one obtained from Step 3)
6. Follow the instructions issued by the program, which will ask you to touch the top-left corner and bottom-right corner. Once completed, the program will echo the corresponding xorg.conf setting
7. Edit the FDI file (/etc/hal/fdi/policy/99-x11-wizardpen.fdi) and subtitute the Top/Bottom/MaxX and Top/Bottom/MaxY values to the one obtained from the wizardpen-calibrate command
8. Once done, restart your computer and test your tablet (UPDATE: Noy noted in the comments that you don't have to restart, but rather unplug and replug the tablet for the new settings to take effect. I'm pretty sure it'd work but I haven't tested it yet)

Till then, good luck and have fun!

FAQ - Draft, TODO

1. Wireless mouse for Wizardpen support is only available in the latest wizardpen-0.7.0-* driver.
2. Pressure sensitivity not working in GIMP: Check your GIMP preferences at "Edit > Preferences". Under the "Input Devices" menu item, click on "Configure Extended Input Devices...". Choose the WizardPen device and MAKE SURE YOU SET THE MODE TO SCREEN/WINDOW (not "Disabled"). Without that setting, it won't work ;)

[REFERENCE AND RESOURCES]

1. TabletSetupWizardpen (Ubuntu Community Help)
2. HOWTO: Setup a wizardpen-based tablet (Ubuntu Forums)

NOTES:

• Thanks to Pedro for his unexpected email and helping me out to test out my HAL fdi policy file.
• TODO: Add stuff to the FAQ (Contribution appreciated)
• Wishlist:
  1. Someone helping me out to test whether the HAL fdi rule method works with Hardy Heron
  2. Have the tutorial posted in Ubuntu Community wiki (too lazy to bother doing it myself :lol)

PC vs Mac: Breaking Advert Placing Barriers

I'm always amused when Apple comes up with their quirky "PC and Mac" video advertisements. And apparently their creative team seem to know how to utilize traditional online advertisement place holders in a creative way.

As you can see from the image on top, they utilize TWO advertisement spaces: the top banner and side panel ad space and orchestrate a situation in which PC touts their own "PC Newwire" which pipes through the coolest PC news. And instead of what he hoped for, what we see are news of Vista bashing and people downgrading to XP and an agitated PC. And then we'll get to see a Mac after the punchline is delivered.

What I really liked about the ad is how Apple's advertising team are willing to experiment and think outside the box. In fact I didn't really get the joke until I notice they used two online advertisement space. Typically my eyes were "trained" to "overlook" those typical (yet effective) ad placement areas. So in effect it really got me curious and trying to play that ad video again and again until I found out their creative trick.

Apple may have paid the cost of having two ad impressions and this unusual "two ads working as one" act may not work that effectively. But I had to say that this concept is very impressive and I would applaud them for being creative :).

(*Note: This ad is not sponsored by Apple in any way, and I didn't intend to publicize what blog that sports the ad :p)

Comment Moderation :: OFF

Having recently receiving quite a number of comments when I disconnected from the web (mainly on the Wizardpen post) and the nature of comments received were genuine, I have switched off comment moderation for this blog. However, I do expect readers to have a Google account (i.e. no anonymous commenting... at least it'd be only *slightly* helpful to prevent spam comments ;) ).

Till then, enjoy reading!