Bug 455309

Summary:	Wayland: Allow to set InputMode of input device
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	Oliver Sander <oliver.sander>
Component:	wayland-generic	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	nate, nicolas.fella, xaver.hugl
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	5.24.90
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian testing
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Oliver Sander 2022-06-15 08:02:16 UTC

I have a SMART Podium 500, which is a large screen with a stylus:

  https://support.smarttech.com/docs/hardware/podiums/podium-sp500/en/home.cshtml

This device does not work properly out-of-the-box under Wayland: stylus movement is mapped to the entire virtual desktop (which I reported at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=411877), and no cursor appears.

The friendly folks at libinput have been very helpful at debugging this, and there is lots of technical information at

  https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libinput/libinput/-/issues/769

As it turns out, the device has an InputMode setting with integer arguments 0,1,2,3, and right now it doesn't seem like the default value is the best choice.  I can set the mode using the `hid-feature` command-line tool, but a GUI somewhere in the system settings would be much more convenient.

Of course in an ideal world the correct setting would be somehow detected and selected automatically, but my technical understanding is not sufficient to say whether this is something that I can hope for.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma:
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.94.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Wayland

Comment 1 Nicolas Fella 2022-06-28 15:50:13 UTC

This sounds like something that is very hardware-specific, which makes it hard to build a generic UI for it that users understand.

If we don't properly understand what the different modes do we can't communicate that properly to the user. Then having a UI doesn't really add much value compared to a cli tool

Comment 2 Oliver Sander 2022-06-29 11:33:25 UTC

Fair enough.  But not all people that teach in this lecture room can be asked to apply a CLI trick.  However, saying "go to the 'settings' page and select mode '0'" would be acceptable.

Comment 3 Zamundaaa 2024-06-09 16:30:48 UTC

Judging by the upstream bug report, it looks like the settings page to assign touch screens to different screens is enough to make it work, so this should not be needed