Laptop Touchscreen (was: Re: Roadmap 2021)

[Alexander Boettcher]

On 18.01.21 18:40, John J. Karcher wrote:
>>> What would be involved with bringing touchscreen support to the PC platform?
>>>
>>> I don't know if anyone is familiar with the interface(s) for active pens, which would be the icing on the cake, but it would be really nice to be able to test whatever touch UIs are developed for phones/tablets on the laptop as well.
>>
>> the general support was added already in 2015 (see release notes [0]) for one specific touch device used with one notebook back then.
>>
>> Since then, however, the topic was not relevant anymore nor integrated with Sculpt. It boils down to write or port the touch device driver for the desired/specific notebook, calibrate/sync the resolution of the touch device to the currently used screen resolution in Sculpt and potentially additional UI work.
>>
>> [0] https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/15.02
> 
> I'm curious to see if I can advance the ball on this a little bit, as a developer learning experience as well as to actually get the feature.
> 
> From what I've read, PC laptop touchscreens and pens generate USB HID events, so it shouldn't be necessary to write low-level drivers for each model.

[0] was indeed a USB touchscreen back then from Wacom. If you have another vendor for your target device, you will need to come up with another touch driver.

> 
> As a short-term goal, I would like to be a able to see (i.e. log) the touchscreen/pen events within Sculpt.  I'd like to use the new USB driver model so it's useful going forward, preferably as a depot package.
> 
> Is my understanding correct?  Does anyone have any guidance on where to start?

In principle yes. First find out which touch device you have for your target hardware. Write or port the touch driver. You may have a look into our usb_hid driver, which has the USB touch Wacom driver already enabled via the dde_linux approach.

Cheers,

--
Alexander Boettcher
Genode Labs

https://www.genode-labs.com - https://www.genode.org

Genode Labs GmbH - Amtsgericht Dresden - HRB 28424 - Sitz Dresden
Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth