I need some info on this since this issue and any possible future improvements are very unclear to me.
The Problem
For context, I’m a 3D artist who’s almost exclusively using the desktop computer with a pen tablet. So good pen tablet support with wayland is very important to me.
But sometimes I just have to use the mouse. In those cases one glaring issue presents itself: The multi-cursor behavior.
The mouse cursor and pen tablet (or on my laptop also the trackpad cursor) each remember their own position on screen. I keep reading that this is intentional behavior with some pretty neat possibilities and multi-touch support. But for any device that I’d consider a “primary cursor input” I’d much prefer if the cursor position can be shared between those devices.
That’s also the common behavior on x11 and Windows.
Example Issues
One software I use a lot is Blender. It’s my job. And it has a particular design for it’s popups. If you move your cursor too far away from them, they automatically close. This is very convenient and fast to use but if you switch between the mouse and tablet regularly, it’s very hard to not make them accidentally close.
Switching between mouse and tablet in general will often lead to missclicks. When working fast I never got used to my mouse suddenly being at an old position. Remembering and taking that into account is an unnecessary hassle.
I imagine that this is even worse if the window you hover over is automatically becoming active.
Another issue (which I’m unsure if it’s a bug) is that the tablet cursor immediately disappears when you take the pen away. This is just very odd.
Any chance of improvement?
In my experience this creates an issue of keeping track of multiple moving targets, that also like to disappear a lot. I’m playing a game of object permanence for something that should be just a single moving point.
I understand that the multi-cursor behavior can open a lot of doors to new features and workflows. But is there any chance of having an option to sync up primary input devices to behave as essentially a single mouse cursor?
Or just getting some more opinions on this would also be very helpful.
Another common issue I’ve encountered (which I’m not sure is fully related) is that the pen tablet cursor is treated very special. It often has its own cursor look and behavior (or rather missing features).
This is something that is being worked on and I’ve seen and reported bugs on this.
But wouldn’t an option to sync up the mouse and pen cursor position go towards fixing this issue?
Just came across this because I was looking for how to enable this behavior so I guess I’ll comment on the other side of the coin.
I have a pen tablet with a display and use it mostly in Krita, which is a drawing software. I pretty much do not need my mouse at all on the tablet screen while I’m using it for art, since I use the pen for everything on that screen and my mouse for everything on the other screens. Having the two be separate cursors is very intuitive in that case, since I use them for entirely different things. A frequent annoyance for me on Windows was that every time I used the pen, I had to remember to move my cursor back up from the tablet onto the other monitor afterwards. (Instead of it just staying where I left it and where I remember it being)
I’m a professional 2D artist, and I’m experiencing the same issue. I’ve tried numerous methods to synchronize the mouse and stylus positions without any success.
Wayland is intentionally designed to treat the mouse and stylus as separate pointers, but the lack of a toggle on and off creates a significant usability problem for artists.
Unfortunately, changing this feature would require modifications in both the Wayland protocol and the compositor in use. In short: this won’t be resolved anytime soon. As of right now, the most reliable options are:
Do you have an evidence of that actually being true? This was incredibly simple to prototype in KWin, and will be either in 6.6/6.7 depending on how fast I can ship it. Maybe don’t be too pessimistic
