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While I have not used a Penclic mouse, I am pretty sure that it is inferior to using a small Wacom Intuos graphic tablet instead of a mouse, like I do.

The tablet is no larger than a traditional mouse pad, it is even somewhat smaller.

The stylus, i.e. the pen, is much lighter than any pen-like mouse can be, and it has better resolution and accuracy. Because the pen works contactless and it is very light, you can move it very fast. You can point to any location on the screen faster than with anything else.

Because the pen is so light, I usually retain it between my fingers while I am touch typing, without noticing that I still keep it, which shortens a lot the transitions between typing and using the graphic pointer. I leave the pen on the tablet only before starting to type a long text.

The tablet is switched to "relative" mode at startup, so it behaves as an ordinary mouse. I use it under Linux, where it has excellent support.

The equivalent of the mouse buttons is configurable. I have chosen to touch the tablet with the pen for left click, and to use the two thumb buttons for right click and for double left click.

After I have begun to use a graphic tablet instead of a mouse, trackball, trackpoint or touchpad a couple of years ago, my only regret is that I have not thought to try this earlier, because at least for me it is much more comfortable than the alternatives, and it is also much more precise, being easy to use for drawings or signatures.



How did you configure the Wacom? Like in xorg.conf? Any tips?


My .bashrc script (when logging on, which is checked by the fact that no GUI session is running) starts X Window (actually it starts an XFCE session, because that is what I use), then it remaps the keyboard to a custom Dvorak variant and it configures Wacom thus:

WACOM_ID=$(xsetwacom list | grep STYLUS | cut -f 2 | cut -d " " -f 2)

xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Button" "2" "button +3 "

xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Button" "3" "button +1 -1 +1 -1 "

xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Mode" "Relative"

The line that discovers WACOM_ID is necessary because the Wacom device driver does not always use the same device numbers, even when nothing has been inserted or extracted in or from the USB ports. Moreover, even the Wacom subdevices are not always listed in the same order, hence the need to use grep for row select.

There are many other ways to execute a script on startup, where you can add these lines.

The acceleration of the Wacom mouse cursor is configured in the standard desktop settings.

"button +3 " means that the associated action is right click.

"button +1 -1 +1 -1 " means that the associated action is left double click.

I have left the default action for touching the tablet with the pen, which is left click. Selection by pointing and touching is even more natural than with a mouse or other alternatives.


This is awesome, thank you.


I believe Wacom is a first class citizen in Linux. They have it in the kernel (https://linuxwacom.github.io/). There is also https://opentabletdriver.net/ that is multi-platform.




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