Hi Ping. Thanks for the response.
On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 02:52:11PM -0700, Ping Cheng wrote:
> Hi Vincent,
>
> Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I also got your email sent
> to Wacom's developer list. I have no idea about the crash. There might
> be something to do with the mapping routine since your log file seems
> stopped around that area. You would need to add more debug statements
> there to find the root cause.
OK. I figured that would likely be the case.
> Two things I'd like to address here:
>
> 1. Serial devices have been EOL'd quite a while ago. You can not buy
> serial devices from Wacom any more. If your company plans to use the
> serial devices after you make the driver work, you'll run into the
> issue that there is no device available (well, you could buy them from
> EBay at your own risk :).
Yes, I thought that was the case. However, I have a nice serial tablet
that I do not want to let go to waste and I figured, as you said, we
could always find others on Ebay. Also, I assumed that the wacom
5 protocol is going to be the same whether it is a serial or usb device,
so once it is all working, I am in hopes that it would be a small amount
of code to add usb support later.
Besides, I'm sure that if we at least were to get a platform independent
serial version working, that there are a lot of people out there on
platforms such as the BSD's, with older serial tablets laying around
that could use it.
> 2. The crash has nothing to do with the device's protocol. Even if
> you get the protocol, it won't help you fix the issue. The root cause,
> I think, lives in the X server and the driver ABI or API calls.
Yes, I realize that. There are actually a number of other reasons we
are interested in experimenting with writing a new driver though. To
mention a few:
o We would like to have a driver under the BSD license that is
acceptable by the BSD community to be distributed in the BSD code
base.
o We want to experiment with moving most of the code out of Xwindows
and out of the kernel and into user land daemons to make it more
platform independent and to allow code for new devices to be added
without requiring the replacement or addition of X modules on
a given platform. The problem with the existing architecture is
that is is so platform specific (namely Linux). I have had this
tablet for years and still cannot use it on BSD. I had it going for
a while a few years ago under FreeBSD, after a lot of time and work
and applying patches to the linuxwacom module, having to completely
compile X before I could even compile the wacom driver, etc. Then
when we moved away from FreeBSD, I lost use of it again. And that
was with serial. We didn't buy a usb one because usb devices almost
never work on non-mainstream platforms until years after the devices
are obsolete, if ever. Serial, at least, does not require any
special kernel drivers.
o Moving the driver code to user land also would allow us to use the
tablets on the console, without X, the way we can with the
mouse, using moused on BSD or gpm on Linux.
Which brings me back to the wacom 5 and Intuos protocol documentation.
How can I get it?
I finally found the http://www.wacomeng.com/ link from a mention on
a Mac forum (if I recall correctly) from several years ago. He said he
had downloaded the protocol docs from there and had even used them to
write experimental code in BASIC for the wacom. However, apparently the
docs have all been removed. All I see now are links to the specific
platform sites to get their drivers.
> The good news for you is that I have an X server 1.4.0 running in my
> office. So, the chance of you make the driver work on your system is
> very high.
That is good to know. I may also further pursue my attempts to get the
current X driver working. It probably will depend on my success and how
long it takes to implement some of our initial ideas on a completely new
driver design.
- Vincent
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