Reading data-only from Wacom tablet

Question

Is there any way to read data from Wacom tablet without raising mouse-events on Linux?

I'm now using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Wacom Intuos 5. It's OK to use the tablet on Ubuntu and I'm using tablet via Ggtkmm3.0. But I would like to get ONLY the tablet's axis data without binding to the window. Gtkmm's window can get tablet-event but I think it is not periodic because it's event-driven.

Answer 1

Using Linux Input Subsystem will be available to take your task.

The code is here, this is print out cordinate (X, Y) and pressure. (for example, filename is lis_read.c)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <linux/input.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main (int argc, char *argv[]) {
    struct input_event event;

    for (;;) {
        if (read(0, &event, sizeof(event)) != sizeof(event)) {
            exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
        }

        switch(event.type) {
        case EV_ABS:
            switch (event.code) {
            case ABS_X:
                printf("ABS_X: %d\n", event.value);
                break;
            case ABS_Y:
                printf("ABS_Y: %d\n", event.value);
                break;
            case ABS_PRESSURE:
                printf("ABS_PRESSURE: %d\n", event.value);
                break;
            default:
                break;
            }
            break;
        }
    }

    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

You can build this:

% gcc -o lis_read lis_read.c

If your pentablet device path is /dev/input/event7, then this program usage is:

% ./lis_read < /dev/input/event7

Root permission will be needed this program.