Posts by whot@floss.social
 (DIR) Post #B7cRieIrTa9XYy51ai by whot@floss.social
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       @davidrevoy Replying here since this is repeated in multiple comments: the only two branded projects in the tablet stack are xf86-input-wacom the Xorg driver that Wacom wrote in ~2002 and has been maintaining every since. Thanks to Linux' evdev interface it's been a generic driver for at least 15 years now but it was originally a wacom hardware driver, maintained by Wacom.Anyway, this driver is going dodo with Xorg and Wayland has a neutrally-named libinput that handles all tablets.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7cRieeq9rjYf8MZqi by whot@floss.social
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       @davidrevoy The second "branded" component is libwacom, written originally in 2011 after a discussion between a Wacom engineer and me. We needed more information about tablet capabilities (some functionality is still only supported on Wacom devices). I think the first non-wacom devices was added in 2015 (a Huion device).Funnily enough, if Huion/XP-Pen/Ugee/... would help with libwacom tablet files before the release of the devices, users wouldn't even know it existed.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7cRietNHpMNODABVI by whot@floss.social
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       @davidrevoy So in both cases, it's legacy naming because Wacom wrote/helped write the code, it was wacom-specific at first before being made more generic and (co-)maintained it for years. I'm sympathetic towards the branding issue but in both of these cases it's "write the code, get the say".As for the wacom-hid-descriptors repo: the HID report descriptor is what the device provides so the kernel driver can parse the data. Just like every other HID device. Not exactly a corporate secret.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7cRif7uPmzC7Hxn9s by whot@floss.social
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       @davidrevoy GNOME was renamed the Wacom panel to Graphics Tablets in GNOME 48 (~1y ago). IIRC KDE renamed it for Plasma 6 (~2y ago).So on a modern desktop, there is no visible branding anymore, on Wayland the only remaining one is libwacom that users shouldn't even be aware that it exists. All that library needs is a single text file for each tablet with "has 5 buttons, one dial, not integrated into a screen".
       
 (DIR) Post #B7cRifJxgycwifbPwe by whot@floss.social
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       @davidrevoy haha, and I just remembered another reason for the libwacom naming: apple released the ipad in 2010, after that conversations generally went like this:- I work on tablets- oh, like ipads? cool!- no, like wacom tablets- aha. ok.Everyone knew what a wacom tablet was, people didn't know what a "graphics tablet" was (unless you told them it was a wacom tablet).So in 2011 naming it libwacom was a much better choice for my sanity than naming it libtablet.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7cRifVezTz7Ix4lBA by whot@floss.social
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       @davidrevoy And the last bit of historical information: we had a lot of branded Xorg drivers because xf86-input-<vendor> was the naming scheme back then (hence xf86-input-synaptics as the touchpad driver). Most were once-off copies barely maintained and little more than s/vendor/myvendor/g from some other driver. Most xorg-hosted ones were retired in 2011, evdev, synaptics and wacoms are the ones that survive to this day (because all are generic now).
       
 (DIR) Post #B7ca3HctmZRMwknoLA by whot@floss.social
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       @davidrevoy yep, sure, go for it