06 Dec 2008, Posted by Jo Hund in Note to self, Tools, 12 Comments
Tablet pressure support on OS X for X11, Gimp, and Inkscape
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.
12 Comments
December 25, 2008 5:28 pm
Donovan
Sounds really simple. Do you have any idea if it will work with a bamboo instead of a graphire?
December 26 2008 12:08 pm
Jo Hund
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.
January 7, 2009 12:45 pm
Chris Jordan
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).
February 8, 2009 11:52 pm
Niels Olson
This is actually quite similar to what is necessary for Linux. Why GIMP doesn’t ship with this enabled is beyond me.
February 8, 2009 11:55 pm
Niels Olson
let me clarify . . . in Linux you also have to use “Configure extended input devices…” and set pen to screen.
February 12, 2009 10:54 pm
Niels Olson
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.
February 17, 2009 2:59 pm
Nicolas Anquet
Same conditions and same results as Niels above, except that I used a brand new Bamboo tablet.
March 26, 2009 1:30 pm
Christian Krupa
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…
April 3, 2009 10:22 am
Aaron Ryan
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.
April 3, 2009 1:03 pm
Aaron Ryan
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.
December 13, 2009 9:22 am
Sebastian
Works perferct with a Genius F610
April 1, 2010 12:15 am
Yuri
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?
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