Generic Tablet Support

[Photon]

I would love to use my tablet screen to draw in DPaint, but the only mouse mode that works (not!!) is Mouse *. However, the cursor runs to the corners (i.e. random and unusable). (1.5.0 beta 2)

Perhaps allowing "anything" to move the windows pointer and then just getting its (desktop resolution) position relative to the WinUAE window corner? That would enable any devices that can move the windows pointer to be used in WinUAE - but only in Windowed mode of course.

Usually the drivers that come with mouse, trackball, tablet, digitizer, stephen hawking eyeball laser etc take care of mapping the mouse buttons to it. (At least mine and the tablets at school do.)

I'm using a P-Active 17" LCD Tablet, and it works in everything I throw at it, except DPaint. I would love to get it working and will ofc help out in testing/debugging if you like. You have my email Toni

[Toni Wilen]

Hmm.. This could work, in theory at least I'll think about it.

[Toni Wilen]

This can't work.

I don't see how it is possible to send relative mouse movement messages without having input device that sends relative messages natively.

PC and Amiga mouse speeds can never be perfectly identical and mouse accleration or programs that move mouse cause even more issues. (PC and Amiga side mouse gets "out of sync" slowly)

"Mousehack" injects fake inputevents with absolute coordinates but as you have noticed, it can't work with all programs (and totally incompatible with non-system friendly programs)

Unfortunately (afaik) the only way to keep sync is to detect the Amiga-side cursor but isn't trivial. (easy if it is sprite 0 like system cursor but gets really difficult/impossible if program does not use sprites)

[chiark]

I agree with Toni - I can't see how this can work.

However, I have a Cunning Plan...

I wrote the driver for the tabby graphics tablet as a commodity back in the early 90s. I could modify that commodity to get the position from an API from Toni, or Toni could create an appropriate event for absolute position change that I could watch.

Toni, any interest in creating this sort of thing or is it a hack too far?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by chiark

I agree with Toni - I can't see how this can work.

However, I have a Cunning Plan...

I wrote the driver for the tabby graphics tablet as a commodity back in the early 90s. I could modify that commodity to get the position from an API from Toni, or Toni could create an appropriate event for absolute position change that I could watch.

Toni, any interest in creating this sort of thing or is it a hack too far?

Whats the difference compared to current "mousehack" mode? (injecting inputevents to input.device)

[chiark]

Er, I didn't know about mousehack mode. Looking at it, the difference is... nothing. The commodity inserts absolute mouse positioning commands into input.device and that is I guess exactly what mousehack is doing.

Ho hum, I should have known that it wasn't an original idea

[Photon]

chiark: maybe you were the originator? It's likely the WinUAE mousehack was coded a decade after you, don't be so modest

Toni: Hm, sync, dunno. Necessary? When you're about to flag an Amiga vsync int in WinUAE, before anything, read current Windows pointer coord, and put whatever delta is needed in the mouse regs to snap the Amiga cursor to that pos?

This is assuming you know the current pointer position. Sprite 0 will probably work with the vast majority of apps, and I don't expect to play any game with a tablet (the game code of most games usually make "too good" mice unusable as it is, so attempting to play it with completely different devices would likely be an exercise in futility)

It's just I got inspired by that cartoon Amiga vid with the Portal music on Youtube.... drool

I'm not familiar with the WinUAE code, just an idea, slap me with a wet cat!