[Soc-2010-dev] status report (fancy input devices)

Mike Erwin significant.bit at gmail.com
Sat Jun 12 14:04:26 CEST 2010


Here's what I've been doing since our last checkup:

- got my hands on a SpaceNavigator
- flew around blender 2.49 to get a feel for it
- built a Carbon-free SpaceNav listener for the Mac
   (responds to plug/unplug, app switch, and of course directional data and
button presses)

- read Wintab spec and Wacom's extensions
   (yes, ExpressKey displays are programmable on Windows also!)
- tapped and observed low-level tablet events in Linux

- gathered feedback from community, getting plenty of wish lists and wild
ideas

- simplified input filtering for gpencil (goodbye, Manhattan distance)
- removed directional bias from stroke smoothing algorithm
- got eraser to erase again

For next week:

- finish Mac SpaceNav plugin for 2.5
   (and re-activate blender's NDOF controls)
- continue work on natural stroke erasure, now that the eraser is functional
- fix Wacom mouse bug!
- filter out useless tablet events before they enter the queue
   (getting lots of "hey, I'm still right here" events)
- ask Wacom's Linux guru how to program the Intuos4's button displays on
that platform
- explore alternative uses for SpaceNavigator
   (1D: scrub back and forth)
   (2D: image zoom, pan, rotate)
   (3D: standard navigation, following advice in their SDK)

- maybe look into smoothing the {2,4,6,8} 3D view adjustments
   (hold down the key to see what I mean)
- maybe get something useful up on the web

The work is going well, and I finally have some working code in blender --
before now, I worked mostly on external prototypes. When starting this
project, I'd not anticipated that each platform has its own techniques for
dealing with each device. {Cocoa,Windows,X11} x {tablet,spaceball} = 6 APIs
to learn just to get everything working! This is an adventure.

Mike Erwin
musician, naturalist, pixel pusher, hacker extraordinaire
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