I’ve done something like that with my CNC in cncJS but it was only a box(extents) and didn’t do the design hugging like LightBurn offers. I hadn’t thought about LightBurn being capable of this, ie exposing design variables which allow for this.
I’m happy to be wrong but my understanding was that LightBurn had no provision for interfacing with it. So no exposed variables, no API, no web service, etc.
You would have to manually put in the frame size.
I’m trying to setup this touchpad/tablet as an operational UI at the device so doing more then adjusting the positioning would be out of scope. Trying to measure the size and then using a popup keyboard enter in values just doesn’t feel like the way to go. CncJS was nice in that they load the model and set system accessible variables we can use. I have found myself using the rubber-band boundary enough times to know I’d want to be able to outline a bounding box and rubber-band.
Figuring out a way to use gestures to initiate the Shift key modifier might be the ticket.
Speaking of gesture control, I found this today
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Nice! I was pleased to see the info screen during the PopOS installation telling me about the 4 finger and 3 finger gestures already enabled in PopOS 21.10 so I’m hoping there is a mechanism to customize that.
What you’ve found should be immediately valuable to the Linux Mint users of these tablets.
That app looks promising.
At first glance it looks like it can provide actions for both keyboard function and mouse function. It’s not clear if both of these can be done at the same time. And it’s not clear if keyboard action multitouch can be accompanied by a separate touch.
FWIW, the virtual keyboard on PopOS 21.10 does not modify the Frame operation like the physical keyboard does.
That’s unfortunate. I’ve seen similar behavior with Windows on-screen keyboard where modifier keys don’t behave the same as physical keyboard.
Alll along I had been saying the vkeyboard would cover the 2 fame buttons but the fact is the do not. I was thinking of the normal LightBurn layout where the Laser section is below the Move, Layers, etc section but on the tablet, all tabs need to be combined in one section to fit the 800 pixel vertical space. Because of that, the frame buttons end up above the vkeyboard. So if it were to act and do real modifing this wouldn’t be a problem…
I don’t know if it will get anywhere but I filed a bug report with the gnome settings daemon.
@adammhaile would you happen to have any insights as to why a virtual keyboard won’t modify the Frame buttons to trigger the “Fire” operation?
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Oh my! Gnome has had this problem for more than 3 years and they are STILL discussing how to solve… They claim the OSK is a “text input” provider and is not supposed to mimic a real keyboard and as one user pointed out, their documentation then says their OSK provides for maximum accessibility capabilities.
Also mentioned here was how before they embedded gsd-keyboard into the gnome shell other OSKs were used and onboard was a great solution… onboard works with Linux Mint BTW.
I’m hoping to figure out how to get this working:
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4413/improved-osk/
Likely because they are “lifting” the shift when you click elsewhere. Shift has to be held when you click the button so if the virt keyboard isn’t keeping that state down it won’t work. Nothing we can do from the LB side of things.
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From what I remember this was the same scenario with Windows OSK. This may be something inherent in how touch inputs are handled.
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Could be but a touch screen is also a bit different than a mouse. I think it’s more like a large touch pad and in that case what’s going on looks like a 2 finger operation or something since one finger must hold the OSK shift key while the other does a touch on the Frame button.
To test I opened a terminal and pressed the OSK’s ‘d’ key and saw it repeating but it did nothing when I used another finger to hit the OSK’s Shift key. It should have modified the repeating char. Pressing and holding shift then pressing ‘d’ with another finger also provides no output into the terminal. There is definitely no shift key modifier being applied.
I could try to look at using a gesture to invoke a Shift key modifier for a number of seconds but I’ve tried some 4 finger gestures and when you get it wrong your design can go wonky in LightBurn as the failed gesture drags things or scrolls off the screen. I checked the LightBurn hotkey list and there’s nothing for Frame buttons let alone Frame buttons-w/Fire. This is a tricky problem.
@DougL Take a closer look at that touchegg. It specifically calls out that it can handle keyboard modifiers. It just wasn’t clear to me if it could do that and mouse press concurrently. Or modifier plus handling additional touch input.
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I will take a look and give it a try. I looked for info on the PopOS gesture control and found nothing and so far support is only found on reddit so while it’s great System 76 is behind it distro there,s not been a big buildup of followers yet.
I tried adding that keyboard extension which added Ctl, Alt and other keys to the keyboard but it operates as an Text Input device just as the default OSK does(gsd_keyboard).
The System76 guys said that the gesture control on Pop OS 21.10 is Touchegg so I will see what I can figure out regarding triggering a Shift modifier key event with a gesture before the Fire button press.
Well that was convenient. Here was the section I saw the modifier option:
Keyboard shortcut (SEND_KEYS)
Emulate a keyboard shortcut.
Options:
Option Value Description repeat true/falseWhether to execute the keyboard shortcut multiple times (default: false). This is useful to perform actions like pinch to zoom.modifiers Keysym Typical values are: Shift_L,Control_L,Alt_L,Alt_R,Meta_L,Super_L,Hyper_L. You can use multiple keysyms:Control_L+Alt_L.See “Keysyms” below for more information.
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Yes, quite convenient but it is odd they did not install the Touché app used to configure the gesture system. And it’s not in their library.