Sunday, September 13, 2009

What the Linux Wizardpen driver needs right now

To be honest: I don't really check this site often - I am quite used to only log into Blogger when I had something new to say about the progress of the Linux Wizardpen driver. And only recently I found out a lot of comments that was pending moderation and I was completely flooded by old comments, so greatest apology to everyone who had left their questions unanswered, unpublished and unnoticed for the past three months =.=.

Such experience points to a fatal functional flaw: that the driver does not have a functional project structure. Currently here's a few items that the driver need, in order of importance:

  1. A support forum
  2. Package the driver to make it user-friendly, which includes the following:
    • Precompiled packages (DEB, RPM) - I'm aware that there are a few people who had already done so and a couple others working on making it PnP. We need some way for these package maintainers to collaborate with each other
    • Generic FDI rule that could allow PnP to be possible
    • A graphical calibrator program - Similar to what has been done for Aiptek (Or would it better for us to use the gAiptek software and make it more general purpose?)
  3. Choosing a project home for the driver. Currently there's two that has been setup, which I'm aware of:
    1. Feature request and bug fixes, e.g.
      • Better mouse support (i.e. the Genius tablets that came with the stylus and mouse)
      • Correct detection of screen in driver and removal of ScreenX and ScreenY parameters
      • Lines drawn on GIMP/Inkscape not as smooth as what that could be drawn on Windows (workaround: Modify the ScreenX and ScreenY parameters that doubles the current screen resolution)
      • Etc.
    Personally I have to admit I couldn't do it by myself: I really needed a lot of help. Both in terms of building a community site and the programming effort. If anyone is interested, please comment on this thread (with the e-mail followup checkbox checked :), so you get the latest updates on who has the same interest on this project as you do).

    3 comments:

    eduperez said...

    I'm afraid that there is yet another repository at SourdeForge...
    So, the first steps alreadey have been done, three times! Now all we need to do is merge those projects and create a comunity around it.

    tulcod said...

    how about one big "linux tablets" community, which will also involve the current wacom community?

    Eric Bègue said...

    Are there people interested to build up a wizardpen package for Debian?