Wacom tablet programming

[Tim]

Hi everyone!

I've done Wacom tablet programming using the WinTab interface before,
using Visual C++. I'd like to look into programming the Wacom tablets using
.Net, but am not sure how to go about it. Is there an API built into .Net
which will allow me to program the Wacom tablets?
Sorry if this may not be the correct group for this message, but I
thought this was the closest I could find.
Thanks!

[Tim]

[Josh Einstein]

Sorry for the delayed reply. In .NET you have a much better option than
going right to the hardware. You can use the RealTimeStylus API. It gives
you access to the digitizer packets as a series of integer arrays. The
packets are passed through a pipeline of synchronous and asynchronous
handlers called "plugins".

Using RTS gives you pretty low-level access to the data reported by the
digitizer but with the added benefit of being hardware-independent. Touch
screens, finepoints, etc all will work with RTS.

Give it a look, it's in the Tablet PC SDK.

Josh

"Tim" <T...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:30A65AA4-CD31-4B3B...@microsoft.com...

[korvis]

Hi Tim,

unfortunately, there is no .NET API in the meaning of C#. I am wondering
what you are trying to do with your App? Why not taking the Wacom driver (the
Wacom driver is pretty nice) and using the Tablet PC API for your Application?

Cheers,

[Camilo]

"Josh Einstein" wrote:

I've been using Wacom driver (Wintab.sys) with API calls via PInvoke to get
to tablet data directly using C#. Wintab defines a packet structure that
includes, among many others, a Packet.Time (msec) value for the packet
generation time. This comes in handy when there is interest in performing
some form of "time series" analysis of stylus input (i.e.: handwriting
analysis).

On my review of the RealTimeStylus API and my limited attempt to use it, I
was unable to come up with an equivalent "time" property in the generated
digitizer packets. Am I missing something ? or is there a different way to
capture the "real-time" for the creation of each point ?. Hardware
requirements specify stylus sample rates at >100 Hz and ideally >130 Hz but
the actual inter-point interval is likely to vary which creates some
uncertainties as to the timing of incoming packets.

I don't know if this question has been asked before. If so, my apologies.

Regrads;
Camilo

[Tim]

Josh
I did try out the RealTimeStylus API and it works well for what I want to
do, and I'm receiving around 140 packets/sec.
I did find one anomaly however. When I have the Tablet object report on
the tablet properties, it does not return correct results. For instance the
pen I am using has 1024 pressure levels(Wacom Cintiq 21UX), but the Tablet
object reports 32768!
Does anyone else see problems like this?

Thanks

[Tim]