N-Trig Tablet Not Recognized

[_nick_caylor_]

A few other HP and Dell tablet PC users and I have noticed that photoshop does not recognize the pressure sensitivity of the N-trig tablets. I bought this laptop thinking that it was Wacom because I knew it was pressure sensitive (which it is on a couple other programs) so I was a little surprised when I found out that there was more than one type of digitizer pen.

Is there a work around, patch or some other way to get Photoshop and Elements to recognize it?

I contacted N-Trig already and they basically said it's the software's issue.

[_Håvard_Øygård_]

I found an interview from last March with a VP in N-Trig, where he has this to say:

"Our digitizers are pressure sensitive. Any apps that accept pressure sensitivity will show up. We are happy to work with developers to ensure compatibility to WinTab. For Windows pressure messages, WinTab is out of date and is a legacy. ISVs should work with N-trig and MS to make sure pressure is implemented."

That's a somewhat mixed message, but that bit about WinTab being out of date and legacy makes it look a little like their response might be a WONTFIX.

[Chris Cox]

Well, we did work with Microsoft. But it sounds like N-Trig didn't. WinTab is currently the only way to get all the pressure/rotation/angle/other bits from tablets. The newer tablet API is very minimal, and doesn't supply all the needed information (it has other holes as well, but they're on the list to be fixed).

[David J Wood]

I was seriously considering buying a Dell Latitude XT2 to replace my current laptop (we are an all Dell outfit). If N-Trig's position is that they will not support WinTab then my response to their WONTFIX is WONTBUY (I'm not sure that's a reason code, but still)! A tablet with no pressure sensitivity in Adobe applications is useless to me. Is it worth me trying to put pressure on via my Dell account rep, or has anyone got any other suggestions?

Ideally I'd want a tablet PC with a 100% Adobe RGB panel, a non-integrated GPU (though still low power) and Wacom Intuos 3 compatible (or Wacom equivalent) tablet features - which means tilt, rotation and airbrush wheel support. Surely I'm not the only one after the designer's / photographer's tablet PC?

[_Håvard_Øygård_]

Chris, I agree - this is entirely N-Trig's issue, not Adobe's. FWIW, I've now sent my tx2z back to HP (thank heavens for European consumer protection laws and their no-questions-asked return periods). I've also written to them complaining about this issue.

It's a real pity that no reviews of the tx2z or XT2 have picked up on this point. It's an important point which IMO would be a serious deal-breaker for many people if it were more widely known. Also, negative reviews may be the only way to spur N-Trig into action.

[_Jarem_]

@djw: I completely agree. I simply can't recommend Dell's XT2 to any of my graphic design buddies if it doesn't support the basic pen features we're used to. Especially given the price.

I also question N-Trig's support... they don't seem to even recognize that a problem exist or at least state they're working on a solution in the future.

Oh well, looks like I'm going with the Lenovo's ThinkPad X Tablet for now.

[David J Wood]

Jarem - thanks for mentioning the Lenovo - that's maybe something I should be looking into.

I've posted on the Dell forums at http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19262038/19441981.aspx#19441981 - I wait to see if that brings anything constructive.

[arlynxyu]

Adobe only supports Wacom's pressure sensitivity, which until last year was the only maker of digitizers. This is an issue Adobe needs to fix. N-Trig supports pressure sensitivity, and the theory that N-Trig doesn't support the Microsoft API and Photoshop uses that and that's why it doesn't work is totally flawed, because pressure sensitivity works flawlessly in microsoft applications. Adobe needs to add support for DuoSense, not the other way around. You guys are insane, just automatically jump to "it's not adobe's fault." "Adobe supported DuoSense long before the technology existed."

Let's hope adobe gets crackin on this. the dell XT's came out a year ago for f's sake.

[Chris Cox]

arlynxyu - I'm sorry, but your statements are almost entirely incorrect.

There have been many makers of pressure sensitive tablets, for at least 13 years back (and that's just from my personal collection).  You can even search the forum here for reports of problems with some of the other tablet vendors (usually due to driver bugs).

Adobe supports the Windows standard tablet APIs, and works with many tablet brands beyond Wacom.

But Adobe is not in the business of writing hardware support code for third party hardware manufacturers.

N-Trig chose not to support the full tablet APIs on Windows, and chose not to support professional applications that use tablets on Windows.

Only N-Trig can fix their drivers to support the full tablet APIs.

[Guest]

Chris has evidently not heard about the patent lawsuits that have been encumbering Wintab for almost a decade now.  Result: those tablet manufacturers going back "at least 13 years" have, one-by-one, been dropping Wintab support.  New entrants into the tablet market (Finepoint, N-Trig) don't even want to touch Wintab with a ten-foot pole.

It is also easy to get the wrong impression when Chris says that Wintab is a "Windows standard tablet API" and that "Well, we [Adobe] did work with Microsoft. But it sounds like N-Trig didn't."

Let's be clear.  It is not a "Windows standard" (which implies Microsoft involvement).  It is a standard that someone else created, "for Windows."  Read the WinTab 1.1 specification: "This document is copyright 1991-1996 by LCS/Telegraphics."  It was LCS and Wacom who got sued by the patentholder.  Not Microsoft.

Any tablet manufacturer that still supports Wintab has either paid ransom money, or is too small to get sued.  How can you call it a standard when the graphics tablet hardware industry (except Wacom) is running as fast as they can away from Wintab?  Adobe might as well just come right out and say it: "Wacom is our best buddy, and we will only support Wacom tablets."

Talk to Microsoft in 1993 and they'll tell you to use Wintab, because there wasn't anything else available.  Talk to Microsoft in 2008 and they'll tell you to use the new tablet APIs, which Microsoft controls and will let you use without charge.  N-Trig has talked to Microsoft.  Has Adobe?

Chris is right that the new tablet SDKs provide maybe 20% of the functionality of Wintab.  But this is a incredibly lame excuse.  Among this 20% is pressure sensitivity, which gets you 80% of the way there.  People using Graphires, and Tablet PCs, and other low-functionality tablets, won't even notice anything missing.  These don't have tilt.  They don't have all these extra buttons.  Pressure-sensitivity is enough.

Microsoft has done its part to free us from the tyranny of Wintab, by providing us with an alternative API.  Finepoint and N-Trig have done their part -- they conformed to the Microsoft API.  Where is Adobe?  Making excuses.  And not even factually-accurate excuses, at that.

Sources:

[1] Email (secondhand) from Finepoint developer.  They deliberately avoided Wintab in their driver.  They even went so far as to provide an application-specific method for getting pressure sensitivity in Photoshop.  This is just ugly, and it's all because Photoshop doesn't support the new Microsoft APIs.  Think about it: Finepoint was willing to go that far, just to avoid Wintab.  Chris portrayed N-Trig as a clueless new company on the block; clearly Finepoint wasn't clueless about Wintab.  http://www.pixolator.com/zbc/showpost.php?p=271492&postcount=7

[2] GTCO owns several tablet companies, many of which have been in the business for over a decade.  They used to have Wintab in their drivers, but they removed it in 2004.  Again, these are not clueless newbies here. http://www.interworldna.com/GTCO/gtco-drivers.php

[3] LCS, co-defendent with Wacom on the original Wintab lawsuit, gives a short summary of the legal maneuvering here: http://www.pointing.com/Wintab.html  Because they settled and then exited the market, this is written up in dry, dispassionate language.  But chat up any one of their employees over a beer, and I bet you he'll have have colorful words for the patentholder.  Remember, LCS invented Wintab, after all.  How would Adobe like it if someone got a patent to key areas of Photoshop, today?

[4] Wintab 1.1 specification, via Wacom (which doesn't mention this mess, since they're sitting pretty, with a license to Wintab that, although perhaps not legally so, is for practical purposes exclusive).  http://www.wacomeng.com/devsupport/ibmpc/downloads.html

If anyone is clueless in this sordid Wintab mess, it's Adobe.  Why don't you stop blaming the victims, take some responsibility, get together with Microsoft and N-Trig and anyone else trying to make tablets, and help to lead ths industry out of bondage.

[Chris Cox]

We've gotten together with every party that will return an email or phone call.  We spend a lot of time trying to make sure we support all the tablets available.

And if everyone is running away from Wintab, why is N-Trig one of the few (only?) tablet vendors not supportting it?

Microsoft's API is too incomplete for professional applications to use (so, they really haven't done their job).  Wintab is the standard on the Windows platform, like it or not.  And many standards have licensing involved.

You make this sound even worse:  like a tablet vendor knew they needed additional driver support, but tried to save a few pennies on licensing and shorted their users instead.

[arlynxyu]

. it's hard to believe N-Trig will return emails to me but not Adobe. that's

in fact laughable.

too incomplete? what's too incomplete? like just incomplete enough? just

barely? it supports pressure sensitivity, and in my book, that's complete

enough (all we are asking for.)

support it.

who cares if wintab is the "standard" by your definition. do you support

other API's, even one? because if so, that second one, is NOT the standard,

and if you can support one API that is not the standard, certainly work

could be done to incorporate another. N-Trig is the only company putting

affordable multi-touch technology at the consumer level. N-Trig will be a

major player within the next 5 years in touch and multi touch vending. You

need to adapt to new technology. It's arrogant to expect new technology to

adapt to you. YOU ARE SOFTWARE.

Also, I'm pretty sure you told me this was N-Trigs fault when I said it was

Adobe's. But it isn't N-Trig's fault. Wintab is not your technology. That

would be one thing, if developers had to license your technology to support

it. But to force 3rd party developers to license 3rd party API's in order to

function correctly with 1st party software is ridiculous. I sure hope the

Wintab patent holders are paying you well to force other people to support

it.

I no longer use photoshop for image editing, (i have come to rely on my

wacom tablet heavily, and after dropping 2 grand on a tx2z, i am furious

that i cannot do what I bought this laptop to do.)

I'd never purchase an upgrade or another adobe product due to the attitudes

from adobe representatives in this thread (barring an unforseen change of

heart..) As much as I respect a "tough, we got your money" attitude,

support would be better.

The Microsoft API may not be "good enough" for professional applications,

but the attitude of, we aren't even going to do what we can do is not "good

enough" for professional users.

Livin the dream Adobe. I certainly wish I had a company that made me enough

money to people who paid hundreds or thousands of

dollars for my software, and not even have to blink an eye or worry about

anything.

"I am Adobe. I am the standard. you support what I support, or you are not

supported. do it, or don't. I, Adobe, could care less. These dollars don't

count themselves."

[Guest]

Chris, before you do any more damage to Adobe's reputation, walk down the hallway to John Nack's office, and ask him how he'd handle it.  John Nack has created an enormous amount of goodwill for Adobe with his blogging.  He's your friend, right?  He's mentioned you on some of his posts.  Maybe the two of you can together draft a response that actually addresses people's concerns, rather than brushing them aside.

Frankly, Chris's reply is completely bizarre, given the information I have documented:

(1) This is a matter of N-Trig being too cheap to spend "pennies" on licensing Wintab.  This must be why tablet companies with decades of collective experience have decided to call it quits on Wintab, because the company holding the patent is so reasonable in licensing it out.  Note that even the company that developed Wintab in the first place is among the quitters, because a different company holds the patent.  In fact, the court ruled against the plaintiff in the lawsuit on every single count. Unfortunately, the appeals dragged on forever, and then they filed another lawsuit, and finally forced a settlement.

(2) N-Trig is one of the "few (only?)" tablet-makers that doesn't support Wintab.  This is highly misleading.  Yes, there are other vendors that support Wintab.  AFAICT, all of these are Taiwanese peripherals makers whose sales are way too small to be worth suing in court.  Or maybe, being Taiwanese, they're just more adventurous than American (Finepoint) and Israeli (N-Trig) companies.  Whatever.  N-Trig seems determined to do things "by the book."  Can't fault them by that.

Tablet PCs are a different market from dedicated graphics tablets.  First, margins are far tighter here.  Also, Finepoint and N-Trig are the only two companies that have ever made activie digitizers for Tablet PCs.  NNeither supports Wintab, and Finepoint has pointed to the patent issues as the reason why.  The fact that they jumped through hoops to get pressure sensitivity in Photoshop suggests that Finepoint, at least, wanted desperately to do right by their customers, but couldn't reach a reasonable licensing deal with the patent holder.

Incidentally, the word from N-Trig is that they're looking into licensing someone else's Wintab implementation.  This might work, but first they've got to find someone who's willing to take on the legal risk of selling it to them.  This still doesn't let Adobe off the hook.  By insisting on Wintab, Adobe is basically keeping the industry at a standstill and forcing people to jump through hoops just to get pressure sensitivity, a basic function.

(3) Microsoft's tablet APIs are incomplete.  This is a lame excuse.  Microsoft's tablet APIs give you pen up, pen down, position, and pressure.  That's 80% of the way there.  Refusing to support the Microsoft tablet APIs just makes you look obstinate.

[Tolouse]

I just bought, stupidly, the HP Tx2z, the sales people didn't know what the hardware and software they're selling actually can do and I bought something that won't work with the hundreds of dollars of legacy software I wanted to install on it.

I'm weighing my options right now and unless I get some sign from the N-Trig company that they intend to play nice with Wintab in the near future I'm canceling my order tomorrow afternoon.

I have no problem using my Wacom tablet hooked up to this new Tx2z for a couple months more if they are going to solve this--but if they're not "Hello Lenovo," "Good-bye HP and N-Trig."

So, in trying to find workarounds, I'm learning the following

There are some art programs that that are marketed toward tablets that use the microsoft APIs, Apparently ArtRage supports N-Trig style pressure sensitivity, so I have a low cost digitial painting option, there's even an optimized version for ulltramobile tablets.  http://www.ambientdesign.com/index.html

And it actually works like Corel Painter, here's an image a forum user from  ambient design did with the program:

I can survive (maybe) until N-Trig plays nice with Wintab--but they need to state they intend to make real progress toward that end or some jovial hacker needs to get this in motion and release some freeware that ignores licensing agreements-- otherwise this laptop sale is getting cancelled.

Message was edited by: Tolouse, after much research

[TkIMO]

After reading this thread, as well as many other sites and conversations on this subject, I have only one question for the Adobe staff: Since when does the fact that the newer Tablet APIs are paltry and broken mean that you shouldn't support them?

As a software developer, I have to support garbage that I don't want to all the time, and I feel just as "unprofessional" while doing it as it sounds like you guys would feel about adding this stuff to Photoshop. However, isn't it a bit haughty to simply refuse if you know it would make your customers happy?

Plenty of tablets - Wacom's Graphire and Bamboo lines, for example - don't support tilt features and other such things even *with* Wintab, yet I've seen many users happily employing them in Photoshop. You can't possibly convince me that these crippled new APIs would be completely useless - I think I speak for everyone suffering this problem when I say that we'd rather live with half-baked functionality than have nothing at all.

Purchasing a Tablet PC in 2009 implies compromises: Overpriced hardware, grainy LCD screens, slow OS response times, and built-in digitizers which could never compare to ones bought separately. I'm not exactly going to be upset with your programmers if Photoshop doesn't have the same features it'd have on a five-star PC, because a Tablet PC is the farthest thing from that. For heavens' sake, I'd just like more than bare-bones mouse cursor functionality.

This sort of run-around between companies - "It's the OS's problem!"; "No, it's the software's problem!"; "It's the manufacturer's problem!"; "No, it's the component's problem!" - has been going on for decades, and it only happens because every single company involved is too lazy to do anything about a person's issue. Usually it would only take a minimal effort from one of the companies involved to fix whatever's wrong, but of course nobody does.

Seriously guys, if you don't give a flip then please just say so. However, if Adobe sees any value in being the one company in this chain of excuses that sucked it up and fixed this issue, I think a non-trivial amount of users (consider that almost 200-comment thread, for starters) will remember you for it.

[Chris Cox]

"I have only one question for the Adobe staff: Since when does the fact that the newer Tablet APIs are paltry and broken mean that you shouldn't support them?"

I hope that was sarcasm.  Really I do.

Look at it this way:  Adobe supported the API that every tablet vendor we knew of supported, and an API that worked. Microsoft came up with a new API that didn't do what we needed, didn't support all the features of the tablets that we already supported, and has bugs yet to be solved.  Why would anyone waste time supporting the new API until it gets fixed and completed?   What possible reason would there be for someone to adopt a new, broken, incomplete API to replace an existing, complete, extensible, working API supported by all known tablet vendors?

(A car analogy: I've got a Prius, why would I replace it with a Yugo?  Sure, it's cheaper - but that's all it is.)

Now two vendors don't want to support the commonly used API, knew that not supporting it would mean that their product wouldn't work with professional graphics applications, and knew that they were shortchanging their customers by not supporting it. But those vendors didn't contact the makers of those applications or respond to inquiries from the makers of those applications.  How were the software makers to know that the tablet vendors had concerns about the API unless they communicated that to the software makers?

If Adobe had known that this was a problem, maybe we could have helped them in some way.  But we didn't know.

I'm really sorry that your tablet hardware vendor shortchanged you.  But we can't do anything about that right now.  Adding even the working bits of Microsoft's new API is way, way beyond the definition of a dot release change.

For the future, maybe we can do something about it -- but the tablet vendors still need to talk to us. 

We're continually talking to Microsoft about their API and getting fixes in place - but that depends on Microsoft's schedule (and probably will get fixed in their current OS version only).

[Guest]

Clearly, it's too late to make it into CS5.  Should've been in CS1 at the earliest (Microsoft Tablet API introduced), CS3 at the latest (Wintab tainted).  But let bygones be bygones.

If support for the Microsoft Tablet APIs is going to make it into CS6, then Adobe needs to change its attitude pronto.  Stop giving us the "run-around", as TkIMO put it.

(1) "... that depends on Microsoft's schedule."

(2) "Microsoft came up with a new API that didn't do what we needed, didn't support all the features of the tablet that we already supported, and has bugs yet to be solved."

No, it doesn't depend on Microsoft's schedule.  It depends on Adobe's schedule.  You put in whatever imperfect support you can for today's imperfect Tablet API.  At some point, Microsoft puts in some bugfixes and upgrades to the Tablet API, and Adobe then picks those up for the *next* version of Photoshop and Illustrator.  Walk before you run.

The listing of the Tablet API's faults is true, but totally irrelevant.  Did you even bother *reading* any of your customers' posts?  It has been amply established that the single most important feature, that accounts for 99% of complaints, is already present and functioning in the Microsoft Tablet APIs: pressure-sensitivity.

In fact, Tolouse attached a pretty nice drawing in the post above, done in a non-Adobe painting program, using exactly this Microsoft Tablet API, which supposedly sucks so badly and is intolerably buggy.

And what's with this prima-donna attitude at Adobe?  "Everything must be perfect before we lift a finger."  Imagine if the Knoll brothers had said in 1987, "We won't code up Photoshop until everyone has full-color e-ink screens, so that we can exactly replicate the experience of drawing on paper."  We'd still be waiting for Photoshop 1.0, twenty-two years later.  You work with what you have.

[Tolouse]

You, sir, make some very good points.  To create successfully people need a bare modicum of features, but those features must work well.  Who here recalls the recent image on the New Yorker Magazine that was drawn in Photoshop 3?   Or the even more recent cover that was drawn using an iPod app??

But since everyone at the corporate level who makes these decisions is currently being a dillweed, or cannot afford licensing to use WinTab, my-non-commercial-personal-use-only chips are still on the hackers.

Anybody got experience working with Microsoft APIs?

The SDK for Wintab and the Microsoft Developers center are just a Google search away, you just gotta make Wintab think it's getting pressure data, or whatnot.

I'm sure any one of the apparent hundreds of dissatisfied tablet PC artists would desperately pay a freelancer to create an open source non-commercial work-around for pressure support.  Such a project also probably offers less risk than posting private documents from Scientology, and lots of folks have done that!

[Chris Cox]

Of course I've read the customer requests.  Are you reading my responses?  Or just misrepresenting my statements straight up?

Nobody is giving you a run around.  All I'm doing is answering questions (and more than a few baseless accusations).

In this case, there was no reason that Adobe knew of for adopting the Microsoft APIs.  Why replace a working API that was universally supported with something broken and incomplete when no other reasons were given?    Your argument would only make sense if you had contacted Adobe about your problems with the wintab API and discussed support of an alternative API.  But you didn't do that.   Instead you show up later and complain that Adobe should somehow have known about things that didn't involve Adobe, and known that some tablet companies didn't want to support the API that most of them are still supporting.

Yes, Photoshop does tend to try and maintain a high quality standard.  And we've been stung many times by adopting APIs that weren't ready for prime time.    How could we know that we needed to press Microsoft to fix the new API bugs sooner if we didn't know someone would limit themselves to that API?  How could we talk to tablet vendors about possible alternatives if they wouldn't tell us they needed alternatives?

Now that we know there is a problem, we'll see what we can do for you in the future.

But I really don't know what more you're expecting us to say.

[TkIMO]

Chris, for what it's worth, I'm grateful for your words. It must be difficult to be patient with users like us.

I certainly don't expect Adobe to be able to forsee the future, and I see your point - if this API looked like a half-hearted attempt that would never get widely accepted, there was no logical reason for you to support it. Microsoft's certainly known for building up excitement about new products and then deciding not to follow up on them, among other things.

Unfortunately, now that users and hardware vendors alike have invested heavily in it, this has become a sticky situation with little choice other than to try to "make lemonade from lemons", as the saying goes.

I can totally understand that supporting these digitizers will take more than a simple point release to address. Adobe's never steered me wrong before, though, so I'm willing to wait if the Photoshop team will truly be looking into it.

I believe you when you say that there's nothing more you guys would be able to do, so I'm grateful that you're doing all you can.

[Chris Cox]

Tkimo - thanks.  And yeah, sometimes it is difficult.   We're human too - we're not omnicient, and we make mistakes.  But we try to make it right.   But some people will accuse us of all kinds of crap regardless of what we do or say.

Sorry that you got stuck with a poorly supported tablet, but we'll try to get things working.  I wish we'd known about this sooner, maybe we could have had support for you already.  Sigh.

And someone is already working on Lemonade recipies 🙂

[Guest]

Chris, if you step back and reread the conversation, you'll notice a pattern cropping up.  You have stated half-a-dozen times that the Microsoft APIs are too incomplete.  Half-a-dozen posters have responded that, although this may be true, all they really need is pressure sensitivity.  Yet you keep throwing out this red herring.  What are we supposed to conclude from this repeated exchange?  That you read our feedback and took it into consideration?

And that's ignoring the bizarre assertions of fact: that "few (only?)" or "two" vendors lack Wintab support, that "most of them [tablet vendors]" still support Wintab.  These have been debunked multiple times, and yet Chris keeps saying this, as though repetition makes it true.  Give us some names, please.  To my knowledge, only Wacom and a couple of small Taiwanese peripherals firms have kept Wintab support.  I have no idea what the deal is with the Taiwanese peripherals companies, but I suspect they're just too small to bother with, given their low prices and the fact that they're not in the Tablet PC market.

TkIMO is quite charitable in granting Adobe the benefit of the doubt, *seven years* and *four* Photoshop versions later (including CS5, not including CS1).  Me, I'm leery of extending this courtesy to someone who's shown nothing but in-your-face self-righteousness in every post.

Chris Cox: "Only N-Trig can fix their drivers" (true, but Adobe can fix Photoshop), "I hope that was sarcasm.  Really I do" (Actually, I thought TkIMO made some good points), "If Adobe had known that this was a problem ... But we didn't know"  (fine, but is Adobe somehow exempt from keeping in touch with the news?), "your tablet hardware vendor shortchanged you" (no, the patent troll shortchanged us, but for some reason Chris wants to blame the victims), "that depends on Microsoft's schedule" (and in 2012, I suppose you'll come out and say: "Sorry there's no support in CS6, it's all Microsoft's fault.  Even though people are drawing using these APIs in non-Adobe programs, we still think they're not good enough to use.")

Let's look at a different attitude on technical shortcomings.  Microsoft's Engineering 7 blog: "We’ve heard this feedback and we deserve the feedback. We don’t have this feature in Windows 7 and we should have."    John Nack: "... we respect their [Apple's] decision.  It's up to Adobe to adapt to the new plan."  Totally different attitude, which makes the reader willing to wait for Windows 8 or CS5.

Maybe I'm expecting too much.  Maybe Chris's personality just rubs me the wrong way.  Maybe he just acts like this all the time, in person as well as online, and this is his way of saying, "We'll do everything we can to get Microsoft Tablet API support into CS6, whether or not Microsoft's enhancements make it into Windows 8.  The only reason we make no promises is that you never know what twists will happen during development."  Well, we've given our feedback, and that's all we can do as customers.  If there's no support for the Microsoft Tablet API in CS6 in three or four years, we'll know where the blame lies.

[Chris Cox]

Shoot - I don't know where you're getting this crap.  Please read what I have said and stop trying to add your own agenda to it.

Incompete and buggy APIs are not a red herring - they are a big problem to support.  If we work around the bugs, we risk breaking our app when the bugs get fixed.  If we don't work around the bugs and hope Microsoft fixes them, then we're hostage to Microsoft's schedule.  If the API doesn't do what we need, even for minimal pressure sensitivity - then it may not be possible to make it work.  No, working in other applications is not an existence proof (your logic is along the lines of "bats can fly, so lions can fly too").   We'll see what we can do with the tablet API, but so far it looks like a pretty rough fit.

"To my knowledge, only Wacom and a couple of small Taiwanese peripherals firms have kept Wintab support. "

We buy samples of every tablet variety we can get ahold of - including many only available outside the US.  All but 2 of those tablet brands work with Adobe applications. You haven't debunked this at all, just asserted something that is easily proven false.   Your knowledge is apparently missing the real-world testing that we have done.    Oh, and most of those vendors with working tablets do return our phone calls and email.

"*seven years* and *four* Photoshop versions later"

Later than what?  It's only been a few weeks since you bothered to tell us about your concerns.  And Microsoft still hasn't fixed the problems in their API that we identified, so we haven't had any other reason to pursue it.

"but is Adobe somehow exempt from keeping in touch with the news?"

We try to keep in touch, but we deal with a lot of different industries.  And you were so concerned about this issue that you kept silent about it for "seven years"?  And all your tablet vendors who don't want to use wintab were so concerned they never mentioned it to us?  Wow.  That's, um, staggering.

I have never blamed the victims. The customers who bought the tablet PCs with half-working drivers are the only victims here.  They deserved more information about the limitations of their tablets.  They deserved better support from their hardware vendors.  Their hardware vendors made a choice not to support professional applications.  You claim that they knew they were making that choice, and chose to shortchange their customers in order to increase profits.

How many different ways must I say "we've heard you" before you accept it?

Now that someone has said there is a problem, we are looking into it.  We'll do what we can to support the vendors that don't want to support wintab. And again, that would be much easier if they would communicate with us. 

[Guest]

What a master of straw-man arguments.

All sorts of tablets, including ones sold only internationally, support Wintab.  Great.  Now how is this relevant given the situation of a patent troll holding a US patent?  (I take it Chris did not follow the links to the litigation information.)  Interesting that lots of them are sold only internationally, isn't it?  It's pretty rich to accuse me of "not debuk[ing] this at all, just assert[ing] something that is easily proven false" given that I have supplied documented evidence that US tablet vendors are dropping like flies.  If it's so easily proven false, then go ahead, prove it false.  Give some names of US tablet vendors that support Wintab.

Let me start you off -- Aiptek, Genius, Adesso.  Of course, these are among the Taiwanese peripherals vendors that I've already mentioned (made in China, based in Taiwan, only a sales office in the US).  I've contacted Adesso on an unrelated matter; they seemed cagey about IP issues.  So I really don't know what's going on there.  My guess is that they're too small to be worth suing.

"Shortchange their customers in order to increase profits."  Yet another repetition of tired old talking points.  This is a patent troll.  By definition, patent trolls seek to obtain as much money as they can from companies, without any other concerns.  This is in stark contrast to, say, patent pools like the DVD pool, which offer fair, low-priced, and nondiscriminatory license terms to all comers, in the interests of diffusing the benefits of their technology worldwide while making a fair (not outlandish) return on their R&D investment.  Look, neither Chris nor I have information on internal decision-making at the company.  But when I see a patent troll, I generally give the other company the benefit of the doubt.  I assume that they tried and failed to reach a reasonable licensing agreement.  Chris appears to do the opposite -- he gives the benefit of the doubt to the troll.

Look, HP and Dell and N-Trig and everyone else certainly share the blame.  Their communication has been pretty poor.  It's not a pretty situation all-around.  But why is it necessary for a representative of Adobe to fling mud at them in every post?  Doing this while attaching conditionals to your promises just makes it seem like an artful dodge.

Did I mention this seven years ago when the Microsoft Tablet APIs were introduced?  No, I didn't.  This issue didn't affect me seven years ago, or even last year.  I had two Wacom tablets and a Wacom Penabled Tablet PC.  Now I have a TX2Z.  I tried to use Photoshop CS4 with it, and only then did I realize, with a shock, that Adobe does not support the Tablet PC APIs.  I'm not in the habit of being a busybody, of sending unsolicited product improvement requests to companies when I don't have a direct stake in the outcome.  Evidently Chris thinks otherwise.

"Bats can fly, so lions can fly too"?  Sorry to break it to you, Chris, but I'm a developer too.  I've even used the Tablet APIs.  Granted, that's not the same thing as fitting them into Photoshop.  But how far did Adobe take the prototype before concluding that it was intolerably buggy?  For that matter, did you code up a prototype, or did you extrapolate from the APIs?  Likewise, I understand quite well the risk of working with an unstable API, but using that as an excuse for a 7-year-old API won't fly.  P.S. If you will give some examples of intolerable bugs in the Tablet API, that would enhance your credibility.

How many times do you have to say "We've heard you" before I believe you?  Once, if you can do it without hedging your promises, without flinging mud at hardware makers, without posing demonstrably false strawmen, without saying that you'll only support the Microsoft Tablet APIs if Microsoft does everything you tell them to do.  Then I'll believe you.  Attitude is everything.  A receptive, efficient, and businesslike attitude engenders trust and credibility.  A prima donna attitude does the opposite.  I even suggested some wording in my last post, giving what I would consider to be a reasonable response from an Adobe representative to its customers.  Why don't you read it and say yes or no, and if not, then why is that so unreasonable?

Is this kind of behavior common among the devs at Adobe?  Maybe I've just been lucky in my experience with large dev teams.  I find that devs tend to be straightforward and reasonable people, who will give you a story straight, without weaseling their way around and using cheap debating tricks.  On occasion, I've seen obstinacy, I've seen conflicting agendas, I've seen carelessness, I've even seen incompetence at coding.  But this one takes the cake -- I've never seen the kind of disdain that Chris has shown in his posts.  I've worked with an ex-Adobe dev and haven't heard any bad stories; but this wasn't the Photoshop team.

This is why I referenced "goodwill" in an earlier post.  Goodwill takes a long time to build up incrementally, and only one searing incident to destroy.  (Notice that Chris also did not take my advice to talk to John Nack to bounce ideas off each other, even though John Nack has proven to be a master at building goodwill.  Since repetition seems to be the order of the day, I will suggest it again.  Go down the hall on Monday, poke your head in, and say, "How can I improve rather than damage Adobe's reputation?  Here's a printout of the thread to date.  What could I have done differently?")

[arlynxyu]

You are giving us the run around, because you ignore every valid point, and just repeat the same thing over again.

Us: "We want you to support us."

You: "It's broken."

Us: "It does what we need it to."

You: "It's broken."

Us: "You support other broken API's."

You: "It's broken."

Ignoring the valid points is tantamount to not caring about them. If you would just come out and say that, we could let it drop as there's nothing we can do.

So just copy and paste the following quote into a reply, and end this all.

"We at Adobe are more than aware we could support the Microsoft API to enable the functionality in the devices you all bought for that reason. We could incorporate the API's pressure-sensitivity feature, and rework support for things like tilt later as the API becomes more complete. But we will not. It's not going to happen. The API may reach a point where we are interested in supporting it. We may still continue to not. Get over it."

[Hudechrome-sd9sPI]

I've been following this discussion with considerable interest. After reading of the entire thread, I decided to look at The Logic Group website, after doing a search concerning Wintab. What stood out was this:

http://www.logicgroup.com/Autocad/AutocadHardware.htm

It appears that in order to use their tablets, even though a long list of suppliers supported indicated some universality, the fact that AutoDesk products need to use additional software to the tune of $300 to $500 for full functionality on AutoDesk programs.

So, Chis is right, and The Logic Group doesn't see fit to provide equivalent software for Adobe, even at a price. I certainly looks as if AutoDesk isn't going to do the heavy lifting either.

I don't know how this plays with N Trig, and if The Logic Group is the HW vendor, but it seems clear at this point that the fit isn't generic w/o additional software from this vendor.