pentab applications (was Re: Ship Meeting Minutes, for 8/6/07)

[Zephaniah E. Hull]

On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 06:43:40PM -0400, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> On 8/7/07, Zephaniah E. Hull <warp at aehallh.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 01:37:20PM -0400, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> > > We also probably need some good applications to demo the pen tablet:
> > > these perhaps should be started in parallel with the other pentab
> > > work.  Presumably paint will support it, but we'll need
> > > pressure-sensitive brushes or some such to really show the pentab off.
> >
> > Erm, actually the pen tablet mode has no pressure sensing.
> >
> > The glide sensor (finger) mode does, however it only goes from 0-15, and
> > that tends to get maxed out from the light pressure that at least I use
> > to operate the touchpad.
> 
> My reading of http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Touch_Pad/Tablet (page 10) is
> exactly the opposite.    You only really get Z information in Pen
> Tablet (PT) mode.  The Z information is also supposed to range from
> 0-127.

That's a mild mixture of misreading the spec and the spec itself not
giving all the details.

We also seem to have a bug in the driver, and I don't remember why I put
it there.

Firstly, we get Z data in both modes.

In PT mode, Z=0 when there's no pen, and Z=128 when there is, there are
no cases of in between values.

In GS mode, Z is still not all that useful, we get Z=15 on normal touch
pressure, sometimes a little below that on very light touch.

And I can get Z=6-8 without actually making contact, but being close
enough to trigger the capacitance sensor.

Zephaniah E. Hull.

-- 
	  1024D/E65A7801 Zephaniah E. Hull <warp at aehallh.com>
	   92ED 94E4 B1E6 3624 226D  5727 4453 008B E65A 7801
	    CCs of replies from mailing lists are requested.

Well, of course.  That's what Unix sysadmins do.  We make things
work.  Even if they're things which are outside our job description
or supposed area of expertise.

As to the other proposal of breaking them for 6 months first, I
will offer a quote from an MCSE I once met:

"You're a Unix sysadmin?  You're the bad guys.  You keep things
working."

Pretty obvious who gets paid when things break, and who gets paid
when they don't.
  -- Dan Birchall in the Scary Devil Monastery.
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