Tablet pressure support on OS X for X11, Gimp, and Inkscape
by Jo Hund. Average Reading Time: less than a minute.
Here is what I had to do to enable tablet pressure support for the X11 based Gimp and Inkscape applications on OS X Leopard:
My setup:
- OS X Leopard: 10.5.5 on Intel
- X11: XQuartz 2.3.2 RC2
- Inkscape: 0.46 (Mac binary)
- Gimp: 2.6.3 (Mac binary)
- Tablet: Wacom Graphire ET from around 2003
Key points are:
- get at least the 2.3.2 version of XQuartz. 2.3.1 will not work!
- In Gimp/Edit/Preferences/Input Devices: Click on “Configure extended input devices…”, set device ‘pen’ to ‘screen’.
- In Inkscape/File/Input Devices …: Set device ‘pen’ to ‘screen’.
- You might have to restart your apps
Nice. Now we have pressure support on OS X for these two great apps. The Inkscape calligraphy tool is very nice. Makes my handwriting look nicer than on paper.
Sounds really simple. Do you have any idea if it will work with a bamboo instead of a graphire?
Hi Donovan, I have no idea if it will work with a Bamboo. I’ve only tested with an old Graphire. I would say chances are very good that it will work. If you try it out, please post your results here for others.
The instructions above work fine with my Wacom Bamboo tablet with Xquartz 2.3.2.1 and Mac OS X 10.5.6 (on PPC).
This is actually quite similar to what is necessary for Linux. Why GIMP doesn’t ship with this enabled is beyond me.
let me clarify . . . in Linux you also have to use “Configure extended input devices…” and set pen to screen.
I can’t get pressure support in inkscape. Using XQuartz 2.3.2, OSX 10.5.6, Inkscape 0.46. Have tried an intuos3 and wireless graphire. I can confirm good pressure control in GIMP.
Same conditions and same results as Niels above, except that I used a brand new Bamboo tablet.
Same conditions as both Nic and Niels above with same result (intuos3 – gimp good, inkscape bad) boohoo, even tried the 2.4 beta in case, but that just seemed to break everything….
shame, used to use inkscape a lot when windows was my primary machine…
Yes…I am having the same issue.
Using XQuartz/X11 2.3.2.1
Leopard 10.5.6
Gimp 2.6 is working with pressure, tilt, etc.
but Inkscape 0.46 is not acknowledging any extended input devices.
Using openSUSE 11.1 Linux and the linuxwacom 8.2.2 drivers everything works well in both programs. Of course, in the Linx environment it is possible to configure the xorg.conf file to “SendCoreEvents” to both programs…this is not the case with XQuartz. I have searched but cannot find any info on how to configure it manually.
Hope XQuartz team solves this issue, would be nice to use Inkscape in OS X.
I am having the same problem mentioned above.
It is unclear if this is an XQuartz 2.3.2.1 issue, an Inkscape 0.46 for Mac OS X issue, or some strange combination of the two.
Both the GIMP 2.6 and Inkscape 0.46 are fully operational in my openSUSE 11.1 ppc64 environment, using the linuxwacom 8.2.2 drivers.
Works perferct with a Genius F610
I have the problem with pen cursor offset when I’m using Inkscape 0.47 with Wacom Bamboo Fun MAC OS X Leopard. Mouse works fine, but when I’m trying to use pen with tablet there is strange offset between cursor and drawing. Tried to make various changes in Input device settings but it doesn’t help. Does anyboy have any idea how to fix it?
The instructions above work fine with my Wacom Bamboo tablet with Xquartz 2.3.2.1 and Mac OS X 10.5.6 (on PPC).