490. WACOM CTH-470 -- Bamboo Pen and Touch on Debian

This drawing tablet works out of the box on my system. I am using a custom 3.8.5-ck kernel, but as far as I know it should work on debian wheezy and above.

Anyway, plug it in and you're up and running. If you use your fingers it'll work like a regular touchpad (i.e. movement is relative to the previous location) whereas if you use the stylus the movement is absolute. You can use the GNOME 3 wacom app to change the setting:

 If you want to annotate a pdf during a presentation you can use e.g. Xournal:

Set to One page, hit F11 for presentation mode, and zoom in using CTRL +.

 To make the yellow eraser tip work for erasing, go to Options and select Eraser Tip.

 You can now draw

You can compare my hand-writing on paper vs using the tablet. Neither is particularly flattering for someone in their mid-thirties...

You can then erase

Note how there are no tool boxes in the images above. You can set the fullscreen view by editing the ~/.xournal/config file -- first generate the file by hitting Options/Save Preferences. Next, edit it and change the interface_fullscreen variable.

I like

interface_fullscreen=drawarea pen_toolbar

which looks like this:

Finally, to disable touch input during a presentation do this:

First get your device name

xsetwacom --list devices

Wacom Bamboo 16FG 4x5 Pen stylus id: 10 type: STYLUS    
Wacom Bamboo 16FG 4x5 Finger touch id: 11 type: TOUCH     
Wacom Bamboo 16FG 4x5 Pen eraser id: 15 type: ERASER    
Wacom Bamboo 16FG 4x5 Finger pad id: 16 type: PAD

 sudo vim /usr/bin/toggle_touch

#!/bin/bash

## Get the "Device name" or ID number
## for touch from 'xsetwacom list dev'

DEVICE="Wacom Bamboo 16FG 4x5 Finger touch" 
TOUCH_STATE=`xsetwacom get "$DEVICE" touch`
if [ "$TOUCH_STATE" == "on" ]
  then
    echo "Touch is ON, turning OFF."
    xsetwacom set "$DEVICE" touch off 
  else
    echo "Touch is OFF, turning ON."
    xsetwacom set "$DEVICE" touch on
fi

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/toggle_touch

You can the do

me@niobium:~$ toggle_touch 
Touch is ON, turning OFF.
me@niobium:~$ toggle_touch 
Touch is OFF, turning ON

All I need to figure out now is how to get Xournal to interpret my presenter button in a way that makes it forward one slide per press, instead of half a slide.