KDE's Krita Ported To OpenGL 3.1, OpenGL ES 2.0

[curaga]

@IanS

Damn, <50$ for that size. Thanks for sharing the info!

Which model do you have? Which driver does it use, does it expose the standard xinput touch interface? Working well?

[IanS]

@IanS

Damn, <50$ for that size. Thanks for sharing the info!

Which model do you have? Which driver does it use, does it expose the standard xinput touch interface? Working well?

I picked up the 10x6.25 which is a rebranded UC-Logic WP1062. It worked right out of the box on all the distros I tried so far, from what I recall it's supported through the xf86-input-evdev driver in the kernel. DIGImend is the main project behind getting better native support for the wide range of generic tablets out there. Probably best to check out their page if you want to know more about the specifics on the interface.

The main issue is that Qt doesn't support evdev properly yet and it has been an issue for a few years now, the most relevant bug report is here. MyPaint and Alchemy both worked properly without any configuration. GIMP and Inkscape needed to have the tablet enabled through their input devices interface; be aware that enabling the tablet will usually cause the mouse to get disabled simultaneously, so make sure to re-enable the mouse as well before saving and closing the dialog. I've heard that Blender has worked out its former issues with evdev as well, though I haven't bothered to try using it with it yet since the UI hasn't really taken tablets into account yet. To me it would be a pain to try to use the keyboard and tablet at the same time.

Overall I am really satisfied with the tablet; it's a great upgrade from the much smaller, less responsive and less sensitive Genius tablet I had before it. I've had it for nearly a year and a half now and I am still actually using the battery that came with it for the stylus and haven't had to replace the nib yet. Digital art is more of a part-time hobby for me though, so I don't use it nearly as much as some might which could account for how well those have been holding up.

[ShadowBane]

I really want to love this program and use it more, but the graphics tablet support is still almost nonexistant which is totally unforgivable for an application claiming to have painting and illustration as its focus. There is no way I am going to waste money on a Wacom just to use this program when I have a great Monoprice tablet that cost a fraction of the price and has specs on par with an Intuos 3 medium tablet.

For now I use MyPaint for most stuff and do color corrections and other touch-ups with GIMP as needed.

Krita has absolutely 0 problems with my wacom tablet... From the sould of it your cheap tablet has crap drivers.

[plonoma]

OpenGL 3.1 Core (not the compatibility profile) and OpenGL ES 2.0

That's the way to go.

OpenGL compatibility profile is lame. If you want to port to a new OpenGL version you should be prepared to mess with your code because you intend to change your piece of software anyway.

[IanS]

Krita has absolutely 0 problems with my wacom tablet... From the sould of it your cheap tablet has crap drivers.

It is a Qt issue; Krita, being a KDE package, relies on Qt for things like input handling. The issue is well known and has been for some time. The Krita devs could work on a fix to contribute back to Qt or they could roll their own solution for handling tablet input, but they haven't despite this being an issue they have known about for at least 3-4 years now.

Wacom is actually the minority in this case, being they are just 1 of the 4 or 5 major tablet manufacturers out there, so right now Krita only supports a small subset of available tablets. Nearly every other tablet on the market relies on evdev for Linux support, so it is a big issue having Qt ho-hum about it for so long. Though Krita is the only major Qt project doing serious 2d work that needs graphics tablet support. I imagine Qt devs just don't really care, especially considering that they were even thinking of dropping the Wacom support as well since they had no one who wanted to maintain it.

[Awesomeness]

Krita has absolutely 0 problems with my wacom tablet... From the sould of it your cheap tablet has crap drivers.

Read before you post. It was already explained that it's Qt's fault.

[ShadowBane]

Read before you post. It was already explained that it's Qt's fault.

I did read. Did you miss the part where it also had issues in Gimp and Inkscape?

[IanS]

I did read. Did you miss the part where it also had issues in Gimp and Inkscape?

GIMP and Inkscape rely on Gtk2, which has always had issues with all tablets, though just not as bad as Qt. My tablet works great with both of those packages, I just had to go into their menus, find the input device option then enable the tablet in the pop-up dialog they provide. Took me less than 20 seconds in each to have my tablet working with proper pressure support. The only issue is that those dialogs have a default behavior that disables the mouse option when you enable the tablet, so you just switch to the mouse option and re-enable it before saving. Gtk3 supposedly fixed a number of issues with tablet support, so in a decade or so when GIMP 3.0 gets released things should be a bit more automatic with tablet recognition and they can get rid of a lot of work around hacks they have been adding over the years for tablets.

[Awesomeness]

I did read. Did you miss the part where it also had issues in Gimp and Inkscape?

You blamed drivers in a case where drivers are fine and just the toolkit has problems with the protocol the drivers use.

[dee.]

I really want to love this program and use it more, but the graphics tablet support is still almost nonexistant which is totally unforgivable for an application claiming to have painting and illustration as its focus. There is no way I am going to waste money on a Wacom just to use this program when I have a great Monoprice tablet that cost a fraction of the price and has specs on par with an Intuos 3 medium tablet.

For now I use MyPaint for most stuff and do color corrections and other touch-ups with GIMP as needed.

If you use Linux, you should get a Wacom anyway. All other tablets pretty much have horrible Linux support.