[Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

JonathanArcher · 2009-04-24 15:33:17

Since I am using KDE4, I regulary experience something very annoying. I am now used to use my Wacom with the pen, not the mouse, but in KDE4 the "click" with the pen is often (I would say almost half the time) misinterpreted by KDE4 as a drag&drop click, not just as a normal click. This happens because you have to tip the surface of the tablet with the pen to do a left click, and while you do so the pen moves a bit on the surface so KDE4 interprets it as dragging and not only clicking, at least I think that could be an explanation. If it was in general like this, I would not whine about it, but I used Gnome over half a year in combination with my wacom tablet during my Ubuntu time, and never experienced anything like that, so I guess KDE4 is just weird in interpreting the signal it gets from the tablet.

I tried to modify the setting for dragging and droping in the system settings, time and area for dragging, but even though I reduced it to minimum (not zero though, I would guess dragging wouldn't work anymore then, haven't ried it out), I still get these accidental drag and drops.

So my question is, am I the only one who experiences this annoying behavior in KDE4 and if not, is there anything I can do about it?

Last edited by JonathanArcher (2009-06-08 17:57:30)

whompus · 2009-04-24 18:28:43

I only get drag and drop when I leave the tip on the tablet, my tablet is setup in xorg.conf and hotplugging is disabled. I had similar problems with the left button on the wacom mouse but due to unrelated problems have gone back to a ps/2 mouse for general use.

anteater · 2009-04-26 20:52:28

I experienced the same problem on my X61t. To counter the effect I reduced the sensibility of the stylus a little, which can be done by adding this option to the stylus device in the xorg.conf:
Option "Suppress" "10" #default is 2, see man wacom

Although 10 might be a little to much I don't notice any hinderance in my daily work with that value. I think this can also be changed with wacomcpl under stylus->feel->suppress points.

Last edited by anteater (2009-04-26 21:11:20)

JonathanArcher · 2009-04-28 08:47:53

Thanks anteater (especially for registering to tell me this), but it didn't solve the problem unfortunately. At least with the value 10 it didn't change too much, when I set it to 100 out of curiosity I did notice a change but then of course the movement of the cursor was very "jerky". And anything higher than 10 is just too much suppression and affects the cursor movement too greatly to be useful. I tried it out with the default mouse values in KDE4 system settings and with restricted values and noticed no difference.

I really think this is rather a KDE4 or QT problem, since in Firefox I never experience these accidental drag and drops and as I said before, in Gnome/Ubuntu it also never happened. Weird.

whompus · 2009-04-28 11:58:03

Do you have your tablet setup in relative or absolute mode and are you using hotplugging or xorg.conf for the tablet settings? Also in kde system settings is the mouse setup for single click or double click, mine is setup for absolute mode and double click and the pen works as it should using linuxwacom-dev.

JonathanArcher · 2009-04-28 12:04:47

It's set in default mode, absolute, and I have hotplugging disabled because of the tablet (wouldn't work properly with hotplugging). Also I use the double click mode, and I use the linuxwacom-dev package from AUR.

whompus · 2009-04-28 13:03:39

Here are my settings in xorg.conf to compare, the TopX,TopY,BottomX,BottomY settings are because I've set the tablet (4:3) to match my monitor (16:10) so you can ignore these.

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "stylus"
Driver "wacom"
Option    "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option    "InputFashion" "Pen"
Option    "Mode" "Absolute"
Option    "Protocol" "Auto"
Option    "SendCoreEvents" "on"
Option    "TopX" "0"
Option    "TopY" "1000"
Option    "BottomX" "16704"
Option    "BottomY" "11309"
Option    "Tilt" "on"
# Option       "Threshold" "4"
Option    "Type" "stylus"
Option    "USB" "on"
Option    "Vendor" "WACOM"
EndSection

JonathanArcher · 2009-04-28 13:28:27

Hm, what are the options InputFashion and Protocol? I couldn't find them in the manpage, are they really doing something? And I also didn't have SendCoreEvents, and I am not sure if you need it, but I put it in now, maybe it changes something.

Oh, and by the way, you don't need to do the TopX/Y etc. stuff to get your 4:3 tablet to match your 16:10 monitor. There is actually a simple option called keepshape which does that for you.
So just add: Option "Keepshape" "On" and your fine.

whompus · 2009-04-28 15:38:48

I can't remember where I got the InputFashion and Protocol settings from as I've had the same setup for a few years now.

The keepshape option did not work correctly for me, drawing a circle on the tablet resulted in an oval on the screen.

JonathanArcher · 2009-05-05 11:14:29

Well, after using it a while with these InputFashion and Protocol settings, I didn't notice much of a difference. It seems to be a little bit less, but probably more due to me trying only to slightly tip the surface of the tablet to avoid this problem. But it still happens every now and then.

Frustrating, maybe if I have time for that I'll test other DEs/WMs to see if it is really KDE related, at least thats how it appears to me.

edit:
Maybe I should paste my xorg-settings for you to see

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "X.org Configured"
    Screen      0  "screen" 0 0
    InputDevice "Mouse" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Touchpad" "SendCoreEvents"
    InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
    InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
    InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "stylus"
    Driver "wacom"
    Option "Mode" "Absolute"
    Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
    Option "Type" "stylus"
    Option "USB" "on"
    Option "Vendor" "WACOM"
    Option "Threshold" "5" #the official linuxwacom howto advises this line
    Option "KeepShape" "on"
EndSection

I only included the stylus since it is only that which concerns me so much.

Last edited by JonathanArcher (2009-05-05 11:20:44)

Haiyadragon · 2009-06-05 10:00:00

QT should have a drag threshold defining the minimum number of pixels the cursor needs to move before it's considered a drag action. I know GTK has it, but wxWidgets doesn't have it for the list view (and probably other components). It's why I can't use my tablet with Filezilla, it's impossible to navigate.

Maybe there's a problem with that setting in Qt4? I consider this to be quite a serious accessibility issue, but it doesn't effect me in this particular case since I don't use KDE4.

JonathanArcher · 2009-06-07 14:18:02

Haiyadragon: There are settings like that in the mouse system preferences, and I tried them out already with no change to the behavior, that was before I started this topic. But as you mentioned them, I gave it a second chance, and now magically it seems to work ok.

You have to set the area for dragging (second option from the bottom) to the highest value (20 pixels) and the starting time for dragging (third option from the bottom) to the second lowest value (100 msec), and now it seems to work for me. I am sure that I tried those settings back in April and they did not work then, so maybe something in KDE has changed over time. Anyway, I'll get back to this topic later and tell you whether I could reproduce the misbehavior in my daily usage or whether this is really solved.

JonathanArcher · 2009-06-08 17:57:14

So far the problem seems to be solved for me, no more accidental drag&drops. At least in KDEmod, I don't know about the vanilla KDE4. I'll mark the topic as solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-04-24 15:33:17

[Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#2 2009-04-24 18:28:43

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#3 2009-04-26 20:52:28

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#4 2009-04-28 08:47:53

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#5 2009-04-28 11:58:03

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#6 2009-04-28 12:04:47

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#7 2009-04-28 13:03:39

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#8 2009-04-28 13:28:27

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#9 2009-04-28 15:38:48

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#10 2009-05-05 11:14:29

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#11 2009-06-05 10:00:00

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#12 2009-06-07 14:18:02

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

#13 2009-06-08 17:57:14

Re: [Solved] Accidental drag&drop in KDE4 while using Wacom tablet pen

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