#209 tablet keyboard doesn't react anymore after opening Xournal and wrong representations

[Raphael Lorenz]

I use a surface pro 3. I installed there Pop Os. When I have opened Xournal then my tablet keyboard doesen't react anymore. Also when I use my stylus pen in Xournal the drawings are in the wrong position or not recognizeable although I drawed what I wanted. But this only happens when I have opened Xournal.

[Denis Auroux]

I'm sorry I am not familiar with the surface pro 3 or with Pop OS, but
in principle it ought to work... things to check:

• are you running gnome on Xorg or on Wayland? Running a genuine X
  server (Xorg) is usually more straightforward with Xournal -- xournal
  recently started to become usable on Wayland in Fedora 29, running a
  GTK2 Xinput application over Wayland requires various compatibility
  layers that were pretty buggy until recently. (A quick search suggests
  that Pop OS uses Xorg by default so you should be all set).

• what is the output of the command "xinput list" ?

• what version of Xournal are you running? (is it the ubuntu package, if
  so is it version 0.4.8.2016, which is up to date, or the older 0.4.8
  which has more bugs?)

I have reasons to think xournal should be able to work reasonably well
on a surface pro 3 -- though see
https://sourceforge.net/p/xournal/bugs/162/
for an issue with input drivers and a workaround. There's also a reddit
thread here
https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/2jyu38/xournal_on_the_surface_pro_3/
from the same period (about 4 years ago) suggesting that things used to
work around then with various distributions including Ubuntu...

• if nothing else works, try disabling Xinput support in xournal (in the
  Options menu, uncheck the first option "Use XInput". Of course this
  removes all of the tablet-specific features and your stylus will just be
  used as if it were a generic mouse/touchpad/..., but it should avoid a
  number of potential issues with keyboard/stylus/... handling.

Denis

[Raphael Lorenz]

Are you running gnome on Xorg or on Wayland?
I'm not familiar with gnome for until now because I'm a beginner for Pop Os.

The output of the command "xinput list" is:

⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Microsoft Surface Type Cover Consumer Control id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Microsoft Surface Type Cover Touchpad id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ NTRG0001:01 1B96:1B05 id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Surface Pro 3/4 Buttons id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Microsoft Surface Type Cover Keyboard id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Microsoft LifeCam Front: Micros id=11 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Microsoft LifeCam Rear: Microso id=12 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ NTRG0001:01 1B96:1B05 id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Microsoft Surface Type Cover Consumer Control id=15 [slave keyboard (3)]

What version of Xournal are you running?
I use(d) the latest versoin of Xournal.

[Raphael Lorenz]

Disabling Xinput didn't make any changes.

But I tried Xournal now a few times again. I noticed this (I think impotant) difference. If I place my hand on the display and I write as usual on paper the input of my pen are not correct (as I mentioned before). But when I don't touch the display and I just move the stylus pen on it every input is correct.

But my tablet keyboard still doesn't react anymore.
I have no idea.

[Denis Auroux]

I think there is something unusual with the input device setup on your
system -- on other Surface Pro 3 installations, "xinput list" has been
reported to give at least two pointer devices called
"NTRG0001:01 1B96:1B05" for the touchscreen, and
"NTRG0001:01 1B96:1B05 Pen" for the pen.
Here there seem to be identically named devices under pointer and under
keyboard, but not a separate pen device. I am not sure if this is the
root cause of the problem you are observing, but it might well have
something to do with it. Alas I don't know how to debug or fix this
issue -- it's a pen/touchscreen device driver configuration problem, not
strictly speaking a xournal problem, and might be specific to PopOS.

This is also consistent with your observation that the pen works ok in
xournal when your hand doesn't touch the screen but not otherwise --

I wonder if it would be worth trying to run a Gnome-over-Wayland session
instead of Gnome-over-Xorg (you are currently running Xorg) -- in
general Xorg usually has better pen/tablet support towards xournal, but
given the strange issue you are encountering, this could be a case where
trying out Wayland might help. (I am not sure about the state of Wayland
support in PopOS; most other distributions offer it at least as an
alternative to Xorg. Typically you'd look at your login screen for
options to start a different kind of session, with Gnome on Xorg being
likely your default option, and alternatives such as Gnome on Wayland
being listed alongside with perhaps KDE or other desktop environments).

I'm very sorry I can't provide actual help with the problem you're
encountering. I wonder if posting in one of the reddit threads that seem
dedicated to linux on the surface pro 3 would be more helpful.

For future reference in case someone else stumbles across this bug
report, can you indicate what version of PopOS you have? (18.04, 19.04,
... ?) and what's the xournal version number? (I think "apt list
xournal" might tell you the exact package version; failing that,
Help->About inside xournal will give you a less useful version number
that's better than nothing).

Denis