Recognizing graphics tablet events outside of Gimp's drawing areas

[Stefan Zeiger <szeiger novocode com>]

Yesterday I submitted a Gimp bug report (#59063) stating that
Gimp doesn't recognize graphics tablet events when the mouse
pointer is outside the drawing area.

Sven Neumann of the Gimp team told me that this should be fixed
for Gimp 1.4 but he requires some input from the GTK+ folks
whether the problem is Gimp specific, and probably a fix for it
in GTK+.

The full text of the bug report follows.

| Events from a graphics tablet are only recognized when the mouse pointer
| is inside the drawing area of an image window. This causes two problems:
| 
| - When using the tablet as core pointer, the keys on the tablet are
|   useless because moving the pen to a key makes it leave the drawing
|   area.
| 
| - When using Window mode for the tablet, the mouse pointer has to be
|   inside the drawing area (thus possibly covering a part of the image)
|   to make the tablet work.
| 
| Steps to reproduce the first problem:
| 
| 1. Use a graphcis tablet with function keys and a driver which supports
|    them. I'm using a HyperPen 6000 with my own modified version
|    of the xf86HyperPen driver (http://szeiger.de/xf86HyperPen.c) which
|    supports the function keys. The XFree86 Wacom driver probably won't
|    work because it doesn't send key events when in core pointer mode.
| 
| 2. Configure the tablet as a core pointer and set its mode to "Screen" in
|    Gimp's "Input Devices" dialog. Assign some functions to the tablet's
|    keys in the same dialog.
| 
| 3. Create or load an image.
| 
| 4. Move the mouse pointer (via the tablet) into the image window's drawing
|    area, lift the pen out of proximity and touch a function key without
|    bringing the pen into proximity of the drawing area, so that the mouse
|    pointer is still inside the drawing area. ==> The function key works.
| 
| 5. Now repeat step 4 without lifting the pen out of proximity. The mouse
|    pointer will move to the upper edge of the screen (which should be
|    outside the drawing area). ==> The function key doesn't work.
| 
| To make function keys work properly, The Gimp should recognize key events
| from graphics tablets whenver an image window has the focus, no matter
| where the mouse pointer is located.

    Regards,
      Stefan

-- 
Stefan Zeiger <szeiger novocode com>       http://szeiger.home.pages.de
NetForge Web Server for the Java Platform: http://www.novocode.com/prod/nf/