<div>Here's what I've been doing since our last checkup:</div><div><br></div><div>- got my hands on a SpaceNavigator</div><div>- flew around blender 2.49 to get a feel for it</div><div>- built a Carbon-free SpaceNav listener for the Mac</div>
<div> (responds to plug/unplug, app switch, and of course directional data and button presses)</div><div><br></div><div>- read Wintab spec and Wacom's extensions</div><div> (yes, ExpressKey displays are programmable on Windows also!)</div>
<div>- tapped and observed low-level tablet events in Linux</div><div><br></div><div>- gathered feedback from community, getting plenty of wish lists and wild ideas</div><div><br></div><div>- simplified input filtering for gpencil (goodbye, Manhattan distance)</div>
<div>- removed directional bias from stroke smoothing algorithm</div><div>- got eraser to erase again</div><div><br></div><div>For next week:</div><div><br></div><div>- finish Mac SpaceNav plugin for 2.5</div><div> (and re-activate blender's NDOF controls)</div>
<div>- continue work on natural stroke erasure, now that the eraser is functional</div><div>- fix Wacom mouse bug!</div><div>- filter out useless tablet events before they enter the queue</div><div> (getting lots of "hey, I'm still right here" events)</div>
<div>- ask Wacom's Linux guru how to program the Intuos4's button displays on that platform</div><div>- explore alternative uses for SpaceNavigator</div><div> (1D: scrub back and forth)</div><div> (2D: image zoom, pan, rotate)</div>
<div> (3D: standard navigation, following advice in their SDK)</div><div><br></div><div>- maybe look into smoothing the {2,4,6,8} 3D view adjustments</div><div> (hold down the key to see what I mean)</div><div>- maybe get something useful up on the web</div>
<div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div>Mike Erwin<br>musician, naturalist, pixel pusher, hacker extraordinaire<br>