[linuxwacom-announce] New driver release, long-standing USB bug fixed

[John E. J. <je...@j-...>]

I've been busy with a lot of year-end projects, but I have a couple bits
of useful code to release.

The SourceForge project is up and running.  While, the website is
filling out slowly, it is otherwise functional.  Please see:
http://linuxwacom.sourceforge.net for details.  The current build is
linuxwacom-0.3.5-beta and is available for download now.  I will move my
how-to off my main server and onto the SourceForge server as soon as
possible.

Next, there are three mailing lists available through SourceForge.  I
will post to linuxwacom-announce and wa...@le... for a while yet. 
It would be my preference if we slowly moved off the wa...@le...
mailing list in favor of the SourceForge lists.  This is partly due to
the inability to reach the owner, Mr. Lepied, and partly because of the
periodic missing emails.  As a side benefit, the new lists allow people
who are interested in only announcements to avoid the development
traffic entirely.

Here are the changes.

1. The "unknown report #1" problem that has plagued the USB tablet
driver has hopefully been solved.  On detection of the problem, the code
defers calling reset until after the interrupt has completed.  This
should work fine for you, but if you get a kernel panic, let me know
right away.  To test, load the wacom driver, unplug and replug the
tablet, and watch the log.  If you run wacdump and move the mouse, you
should see the unknown report get logged, followed by "wacom_event" and
the reset.  There is still no way to get the tablet to reconnect to the
same event device if it is left open.  That's a problem for another day.

2. When the xf86Wacom driver is loaded and the USB flag is specified, it
will attempt to load the wacom and evdev modules automatically.  If the
tablet is already plugged in, you should be good to go.  This means that
you may not need to modprobe for the devices in your startup scripts
anymore.

3. I have merged some code from Ping Cheng of Wacom to handle new tool
identifiers.  He is testing the kernel driver against their old and new
tablets as he has time.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me.

The HOWTO is still available at http://linux.joganic.com/wacom and will
remain so until I move it to the linuxwacom website.

-John