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Ask Slashdot: What Touch Screen Support is Available in X?
Gextyr
submitted a question regarding something I've always
wondered about as well. He asks:
"I work at a local computer shop, and was just given
permission to put together a Linux box for display and
demo purposes. My boss gave me a touch screen for
this (the touch matrix is serial controlled) purpose as well.
I want to know if there is any touch screen support for
Linux, and if so, where can I get mode information about it?"
I've seen touch screens which act just like serial mice. Literally the guy unplugged the touch screen and plugged in a mouse, and continued working. In that case, it would just work. I have no idea if all are like that though.
The Metro-X X server that came with Caldera up to v 1.2 had support for several different types of touchscreens. Good option if you're not averse to (dare I say it?) buying some software to support your Linux system. It's a pretty good X server, too.
You might also double-check the Xfree86 docs for a recent version to see what they support.
Most touchscreens' serial output does *not* (unfortunately) look like a serial mouse. This makes sense when you realize a mouse is a relative position device, but the touchscreen is absolute. Some screens do have hardware to make the conversion, though...
XFree86 has support for the Elographics touchscreen.
However, you may have to recompile XFree by
yourself, not sure if any of the standard
distributions support it out of the box
I installed a serial-port touch screen on a
sparc5 about 2 years ago.. It was murder..
I've seen 2 comments yet on touch screens that acted just like mice.. care to provide a company/model for one that would do this?
MetroLink's Metro-X server claims to do it. (By claims, I mean that I have never seen it in action.) Metro-X supports Carroll Touch, EloGraphics, Lucas Deeco, and MicroTouch. I use Metro-X as my x server, and it seems pretty good. It loads much faster than XFree86.
-The Coward
MetroLink: www.metrolink.com
Trident Systems (http://www.tridsys.com) has been selling touchscreen drivers and providing installation as a one stop solution for years. I worked on the drivers many years ago ('94).
I would stray away from the Elographics monitors if possible. Their operation gets spotty after a while, and the picture quality would do Linux a disservice. On top of what little use I have with them around the shop, I have heard some horror stories regarding their use.
Magic Touch (yes, believe it or not, they put a space between the words -- must not be programmers or Germans) which says "Introducing at Comdex: Magic Touch USB version and Linux version." on the home page.
Found in Gary's Encyclopedia.
XFree86 handles the EloGraphics and MicroTouch
serial touchscreens throught the XInput extension.
The MicroTouch driver can differenciate the finger
from the pen on the supported hardware.
See:
http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.3.1/xinput.html
MetroX (http://www.metrolink.com) supports touchscreens under Linux.
I have thought about doing this off and on for years. I always assumed that the easiest way to do it would be to have a seperate app read the serial info and control the cursor via standard X events. There might be a problem with sending mouse clicks to other programs (cross-app events are specially marked and ignored for security reasons in some or most apps). This could be solved in a number of simple ways.
sdw
Stephen D. Williams
Touch Screens are something we use a lot at my compnay...for POS applications...it is extremely fast under linux and of course reliable...a good source of info can be found at www.viewtouch.com
Gene and CO. are good people....
Good Luck,
Nick
LSG
Touch Screens are something we use a lot at my company...for POS applications...it is extremely fast under linux and of course reliable...a good source of info can be found at www.viewtouch.com
Gene and CO. are good people....
Good Luck,
Nick
LSG
I have no personal experience with a touchscreen specifically supported by X. However, I have used (for that matter, I'm using it right now-- the IBM 8516 is staring at me and the IBM TouchSelect panel (one of this clipon jobbies) is on the shelf five feet from me)) touchscreens with X. OS/2 has excellent touchscreen drivers (for IBM's touchscreen of course). I use the XFree86 for OS/2 Xserver, which runs just fine and uses the OSMOUSE mouse subsystem--in other words, OS/2 managers the mouse.
Thus, I get a touchscreen and then run Unix programs with it. I especially like using touchscreens while using the Web.
This isn't really using a touchscreen with Linux--it's using an Xserver that has a touchscreen. But, it works (and besides, I'm an OS/2 junkie. It's a love-hate thing with me but I keep using OS/2 anyways.)
TrueType X fontserver ported to OS/2 (I told you I was an OS/2 junkie)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
RedHat 5.0 included Metro-X as optional X server. The condition was that you could use Metro-X for free on one machine but had to pay Metro-X for addtional installations. It is not expensive in any case.
-- hgc
-- hgc
Linux: There is no infringing code.
My experience with touchscreens is the same, just unplug the mouse, plug in the touchscreen, and away you go, pretty slick. I've only ever used one touchscreen on a PC though, so don't get all over me if not all are like this. :)
Force Recon Half-Life TC: Check it out
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. . . MetroX provides support with their X server.
The Linux server is I think about $40 dollars.
chaz
You might want to check out MicroTouch. I know that at least at one point they had drivers available for various unixes, but I've only had the unfortunate opportunity of using them with windows. On windows, the touch screen basically sent mouse events to the OS.