DC

Developing with a pen tablet

Posted on
Tags: Wacom , workflow

Tl;dr

Deactivated Windows Ink in the Wacom pen settings application.

Long story

I could slap myself for this if it was not so stupid. For everyone here my problem I had over the weeks: I use my Wacom Intuos 4 (now it is called Intuos Pro?) as a mouse replacement at work. I use it for my wrist and shoulder, there should be no problems later in life that I need.

Wacom tablet as a mouse replacement

The tablet is set as a complete replacement for the mouse and I keep it at work. At home, I still use a mouse but not too actively. For a good experience with my dear Firefox, I use mouse gestures (Gesturefy) and was always happy about it.

Now that everything is working fine with the mouse, the tablet did not work as expected. For the gestures I use the default right mouse click event but tell you what: this does not do blub with the pen tablet.

Quick solution: deactivate right-click in the pen settings and set it to “Navigation > back”. Worked fine, because that is the most used command that I use it for, not much lost on this solution.

The gestures extension was still active and running if I had to use my mouse again from time to time (for whatever reasons, my health bites me).

Wacom tablet and web development

This is a non-fun part for me. I use these web development tools at this time:

That is all. Not as much as some might think because these are the tools I mostly use for editing. Anything else does not require anything special, it worked fine. How come I wrote this post for this? Easy: I had to work with Visual Studio a lot in the past weeks, the other tools were not used as heavy as normal. Now I am back on Visual Studio Code and boy it is such a bloated way of work I should ask Wacom to get me my data for running with my pen for kilometres!

Now was the time to find a real solution

For the first part of a solution, I got the Internet Wacom Settings up and try to find something in the GUI I could trigger to change the stupid behaviour(?). Nothing.

Then my second source of wisdom came in: The Internet (sometimes it is better to use it as a first). I search on this topic: “Wacom Intuos and Visual Studio Code” and there was enlightenment! The very first link got me to a Visual Studio Code issue, and I found my answer on the last comment: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/39801#issuecomment-416339749

Thank you, Internet, for finding solutions so easy and save work time (damn it).

Found the problem, not in my tools but the behaviour of my operating system

Now I had my solution to this problem: deactivate Windows Ink in the Tablet Settings for this app and I am fine. Just like in the comment stated, it could take hours for this if you search it. In the end, it was easy: you just find somebody else who solved it already… yeah, easy… took me weeks to search for it.

Now, everything made sense: the default use of the tablet is using Windows Ink because the tablet is used this way by default. Could come upon Mr Obvious myself. We are an intelligent race of individual egos. Back to topic. First, I had to find this option and my German language on Windows didn’t help. It took time to find the “Use Windows Ink” field to deactivate it.

Now that I tried this on Visual Studio Code and it worked as expected, I was happy. I had to note this and make a post. Hooray! Praise me! Other applications/tools followed the same option, and everything worked fine.

Temporary and final solutions

Ok, it was not fine to mangle my browser and set some semi-fine solution I did not like at the beginning till the end and should look for solutions from the beginning because I knew Visual Studio Code was not working right from the beginning. If you ever get in this situation, then please be cool and hear me out: I think this is not a way to say: “You should have done it the first time you needed it!”

I needed it mostly for browsing on my end because Visual Studio was working fine, with a little overhead. On the other side, it shows that another toolset the right direction to the solution, and if I would search it for a Firefox problem, then I might not come out of it alive after years of searching.

In the end, I found it with a (temporary) solution I could work with. Now it is a whole new speed mark and (lazier but faster) moving my pen improves my productivity and health, I hope.

If you find this page, then I must thank “GarryPlays” for his comment and it shows, that we need to share information, that can help one more user, than saying nothing at all or be quiet. Just set it somewhere, be it on GitHub, Gitlab, PasteBin, your blog or else. Just do it!

Situation now

Now I can use my tools just like my mouse earlier. One thing I miss: The OS round menu animation around the mouse icon and the usability of the long click. I started to like that. It is gone, and I must use the pen key. Because I like that function and do not want to deactivate Windows Ink everywhere on default settings I do it only with needed tools. Maybe I change this to default anyway.

There is another problem I just do not like on the Wacom tablet setting application that appeared: you cannot make settings options inheritable but always make a copy of the current (default?) settings and update all the individual application settings by hand if something global should change. Maybe I missed something, it’s not cool. On a lot of applications, this would be bad. It is a good temporary solution for me I can (really) live with.

Now I must get back to old habits, and that takes time because we are creatures of habits and the new “we’re not so bad”-habit is my head telling me to not screw over and learn something again.