[geeks] Digitizer tablets?

[Joshua Boyd]

On 1/4/25 14:31, Mouse via geeks wrote:
> I'm finding it would be useful to have a digizer tablet with a pen
> input.  (I have one with a puck for input; it's a Summagraphics.  But,
> as good as a puck is for some use cases, there are others for which a
> pen is better.)
>
> What little I've managed to find seems to indicate that Wacom is the
> big name these days, but they seem to have heavily bought into the
> "just use our SDK" paradigm rather than documenting their hardware's
> interface - their SDK probably won't run on my machines and, unless
> they provide source, I wouldn't use it even if it did.  (And their
> website seems to be designed to keep people from actually reaching
> them.  Perhaps I've missed something.)
>
> So, anyone know anything about a tablet with a pen UI and a documented
> interface to the host?  While I'm wishing for unicorns, preferably one
> I can buy new at a brick-&-mortar in Ottawa (Canada).


Wacom and XP-Pen seem to be pretty good about supporting open source 
linux drivers, at least in the way of supplying hardware.

The official open source linux drivers for Wacom are done in the open 
with support from Wacom staff.  They are pretty up to date in supporting 
their devices on linux, and unlike on Windows/macOS they don't drop the 
old devices as far as I can see (at least my 20yo tablet continues to be 
supported).

The SDK then is use their open source drive and Xinput. I assume your 
machines means NetBSD, so I imagine their driver doesn't work there.

Looking into NetBSD support, what I can find is from 8 years ago, and 
their list of supported devices 8 years ago was very short (nothing 
newer than 1998-2001ish).

Looking at OpenBSD support, I at least see someone has a CTL-490 working 
correctly in 2024.  The CTL-490 is a circa 2015 product.

Frankly, I doubt you can go to a store in your area and buy anything 
other than Wacom.  If you are able to find something other than Wacom 
locally, then look them up to see if by some chance they happen to just 
support USB HID pointer absolute mode. The digimend driver package for 
Linux seems to imply that there might be some tablets that support a 
pure HID tablet mode, and some others support the wacom protocol, but 
that many require various minor patches to deal with their 
incompatibilities.

I doubt that this is what you want to hear. Almost nothing seems to go 
with documenting their hardware's interface these days.