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View Full Version : Option to disable TOUCH DRAWING, please (Surface Pro 3)



benjamino
12-30-2015, 12:10 AM
Hello

I know this has been discussed before, to some extent.

I understand that every combination of hardware/OS is probably a pain to support correctly but since it seems the Surface Pro is a popular choice among ArtRage users, wouldn't it be nice to add an option to disable touch drawing while still allowing multi-touch gestures to pan, rotate and zoom using microsoft APIs ?

There are too many occurrences of random strokes that I only discover 80 undo levels too late :( I even considered switching back to Photoshop because of this, but I like ArtRage better... And since Photoshop supports this touch drawing rejection nicely, I guess it should be possible.

Thanks for sharing your plans about that with us :)

Benjamin

currentdir
01-01-2016, 06:18 PM
Most important thing in Edit->Preference->Input is NOT "API A, API B, API C etcetc.... ".

It is "Suppress touch painting" option for those who have digitizer inside LCD, like Surface.

We use touch for UI.
WE DO NOT USE TOUCH FOR PAINTING.

--
currentdir
Surface PRO / Windows 10 / ArtRage 4.5.9 64bit

sastian
04-05-2016, 06:49 PM
this is something ive asked for as well... ill be subscribing here to watch for answers...

thedayismine
08-18-2016, 05:38 PM
Hi there.
Long time lurker / artrage owner.

I also would like to vote for this. This past weekend I went and picked up a surface pro 4 solely on the grounds that artrage has these amazing stencils that can be manipulated by multitouch... and while I can manipulate them via multitouch...every other time I interact with the stencil it produces an accidental brush stroke... I can also report that I get accidental brush strokes sometimes when trying to manipulate the canvas zoom/rotation. Pretty please add a the ability to disable touch brush input whilst keeping the ability to manipulate the canvas rotation angle/zoom/stencils etc.

It seems that this issue has popped up quite a bit over the years. If its an issue of development cost... i'd be willing to foot the bill myself so that this feature could be put in. I'm dead serious about that... and I'm no rich person. On that note. Is artrage being actively developed in terms of coding?

Was anything

Arrange is the only program (literally only) that has these genius stencils. Lets bring'er home people!

sastian
09-06-2016, 12:35 PM
Check this thread out.. this is the same issue that i consider critical for my workflow. Im currently using Sketchbook Pro for Win10 since they have added this feature

https://forums.artrage.com/showthread.php?51002-Proper-Configuration-of-Cintiq-Companion-2

HannahRage
09-06-2016, 02:01 PM
It seems that this issue has popped up quite a bit over the years. If its an issue of development cost... i'd be willing to foot the bill myself so that this feature could be put in. I'm dead serious about that... and I'm no rich person. On that note. Is artrage being actively developed in terms of coding?



ArtRage is very actively developed (we recently added support for AES styluses, if you're looking for an input related example) - the main problem lies in the other end; if the drivers/touch input options don't play nicely with each other or the software options we can offer, there's only so much we can do (the main issue is magically distinguishing between stylus input, finger drawing input, finger gesture input and random palm input, and sometimes there is literally nothing to tell the software which one it is), and most of the hardware hasn't really changed much since people started asking for palm rejection.

I'm not saying it definitely isn't possible or won't happen in the future - but currently, it's close enough to impossible *for ArtRage* that we haven't yet added it. We aren't anti-palm rejection - both our iOS and Android apps offer it, but that's possible because the styluses support it and mobile devices are very good at detecting different types of touch input.

sastian
09-07-2016, 08:48 AM
ArtRage is very actively developed (we recently added support for AES styluses, if you're looking for an input related example) - the main problem lies in the other end; if the drivers/touch input options don't play nicely with each other or the software options we can offer, there's only so much we can do (the main issue is magically distinguishing between stylus input, finger drawing input, finger gesture input and random palm input, and sometimes there is literally nothing to tell the software which one it is), and most of the hardware hasn't really changed much since people started asking for palm rejection.

I'm not saying it definitely isn't possible or won't happen in the future - but currently, it's close enough to impossible *for ArtRage* that we haven't yet added it. We aren't anti-palm rejection - both our iOS and Android apps offer it, but that's possible because the styluses support it and mobile devices are very good at detecting different types of touch input.

I've tried pointing out that this seems to have changed and other competing software developers are taking advantage of it. So that argument may need to be revisited.

HannahRage
09-07-2016, 03:48 PM
I've tried pointing out that this seems to have changed and other competing software developers are taking advantage of it. So that argument may need to be revisited.

Yes, you have. Repeatedly. Your feedback - and the feedback of many users before you - has been heard. And we've said it's something we'd like to have, we know it's something our users could benefit from, it's something we might be able to add in future, but that it isn't really workable in ArtRage right now. Windows touchscreen devices have not changed since you first started commenting, we haven't rebuilt ArtRage's entire system for reading touch/stylus input, and our programmers haven't suddenly woken up in the middle of the night crying 'eureka!'.

The only thing repeatedly asking us about the same thing does is make us more annoyed as we have to constantly re-explain the same thing. I'm not going to drag a programmer away from actual ArtRage development to re-explain in increasing technical detail why we're not doing it right now, because that won't actually change the answer, it doesn't give you any useful additional information, and it's a waste of their time. I'm just going to keep telling you the same thing in different ways, until I run out of patience with you constantly popping up with the same comments and start treating them as spam.

thedayismine
09-18-2016, 05:16 PM
Apologies Hannah for any frustration caused here.

I know... we can be difficult.

I think that the feature request/issue in question is just such a darn frustration that this then carries over into the communication. Apologies for that.

So... I dont want anyone to get upset at this but... I must try to help.

Just quickly looking at your response... the golden line appears to be,"we've said it's something we'd like to have". (sorry I dont know how to do the quote thing)

THIS SOUNDS GREAT!!!!


This means that our entire problem is simply implementation. Right?

Unless my extrapolation of your response is incorrect it seems the problem is simply programming the feature in the application.

As I stated a few posts above, I would love to contribute to the developement of this specific feature. In whatever way I can.

I dont have coding abilities myself but I DO most certainly know where to find people that do... Specifically in the Art/ Design App niche.

A Fresh Pair of eyes never hurts when trying to solve a problem. In theory, is this something that you guys would be interested in?



In closing, I really appreciate your Patience in Reading my and Other user requests.

Apologies for any frustration caused.

Thanks

thedayismine
09-18-2016, 06:00 PM
If my last response is a little much; please know I am just trying to help.

Thanks Gang

HannahRage
09-26-2016, 08:05 AM
If my last response is a little much; please know I am just trying to help.

Thanks Gang

We do appreciate our user's support; this is just one of those things that throwing an extra person at won't really help with (aside from the logistical issues or that fact that I'm not sure you realise how much a programmer costs ;D ). If the hardware/drivers suddenly start supporting the sort of proper palm rejection that suddenly provides the right kind of input data, which is fairly likely to happen eventually, ArtRage will probably* be able to start supporting it very easily. But hacking a workaround from the software end is really, really horrible and ArtRage was just never designed to work in ways that would complement that kind of workaround.


*caveat for hypothetical weird software issues or both our programmers coming down with food poisoning for six months

10-11-2016, 05:36 AM
Sorry to have to ask this again. But I didn't see the technical explanation. Why is it that Sketchbook can support Stylus only input but ArtRage cannot? Is this because Sketchbook was written as a Universal Windows app?

I LOVE ArtRage, but I simply cannot use the Windows version on my Surface due to this issue. Unless ArtRage plans to fix this issue in windows I will have to switch, which means I'll switch on Android devices too in order to maintain unity across my art apps.

Sorry.

MattRage
10-12-2016, 11:47 AM
We have been looking in to this but there are some tricky issues relating to the range of input standards required to run on a variety of Windows devices at the moment. ArtRage supports Wintab (the older standard used by the majority of machines in the fairly recent past and machines that do not have a screen input device), and Realtime Stylus (the Microsoft standard that they adopted after abandoning their previous half completed Ink Services standard). It looks like the Realtime Stylus standard, which was also partially completed, is basically being abandoned again however.

As a small company that has as wide a range of users as we do it's hard to maintain support for the various standards that are being invented, half finished, abandoned, and replaced at the rate it's happening on Windows. Wacom's drivers theoretically support Realtime Stylus so we'll be told we can abandon Wintab but that's simply not feasible because a) Many of the devices running ArtRage don't work well with RTS, and b) The Wacom 'Windows Ink' option on Win7 causes Microsoft's 'pulse at input point' to trigger unless you registry hack and prevents correct functionality of right clicks in some cases. The two standards also compete with each other when running Windows Ink from the Wacom driver and that confuses input in ArtRage.

Reliable touch rejection on the Surface is mainly possible right now thanks to some changes MS have made in the Windows Ink standard (the other new one I mentioned) and at the moment we're not working with that directly because it's a Windows 10 standard (possibly Windows 10 Anniversary only, I need to confirm this) and as such is used by a minority of the machines we're working with, there are also some issues with drivers for this standard currently, especially when you're also working with other standards. Before Windows Ink was implemented it was possible to fake touch rejection by rejecting 0 pressure strokes, but we work with 0 pressure strokes for mouse input (something a larger company who is writing software to showcase a touch screen may not care about) and we've also seen plenty of cases where a tablet sends data with 0 pressure due to driver oddities, so we've not gone down that road. We've also been talking to some driver developers who have suggested that the driver may start handling this kind of thing internally, which would immediately invalidate any time we spent on it anyway so we're waiting for more info on that.

So, to summarise: A larger company can cope with the standards rollercoaster more easily, they just write another input system for the new standard, but that's a lot of work for a relatively small percentage of users so it's harder for us to adapt in the same way. We want to do touch rejection because it makes sense for users with touch input PCs, but our development efforts are currently focused on features for all users so we don't have the bandwidth right now to completely rewrite the input system. It's not a pleasant thing for me to have to say, because I don't want to give the impression that we don't care (we do!), it's just a practical reality of being a small company in an environment where the OS vendor keeps deciding to change things under you and expects you to keep up. As soon as we get some time to look in to it further we will, we just have to prioritise development time in other areas right now.

thedayismine
10-19-2016, 03:08 PM
We have been looking in to this but there are some tricky issues relating to the range of input standards required to run on a variety of Windows devices at the moment. ArtRage supports Wintab (the older standard used by the majority of machines in the fairly recent past and machines that do not have a screen input device), and Realtime Stylus (the Microsoft standard that they adopted after abandoning their previous half completed Ink Services standard). It looks like the Realtime Stylus standard, which was also partially completed, is basically being abandoned again however.

As a small company that has as wide a range of users as we do it's hard to maintain support for the various standards that are being invented, half finished, abandoned, and replaced at the rate it's happening on Windows. Wacom's drivers theoretically support Realtime Stylus so we'll be told we can abandon Wintab but that's simply not feasible because a) Many of the devices running ArtRage don't work well with RTS, and b) The Wacom 'Windows Ink' option on Win7 causes Microsoft's 'pulse at input point' to trigger unless you registry hack and prevents correct functionality of right clicks in some cases. The two standards also compete with each other when running Windows Ink from the Wacom driver and that confuses input in ArtRage.

Reliable touch rejection on the Surface is mainly possible right now thanks to some changes MS have made in the Windows Ink standard (the other new one I mentioned) and at the moment we're not working with that directly because it's a Windows 10 standard (possibly Windows 10 Anniversary only, I need to confirm this) and as such is used by a minority of the machines we're working with, there are also some issues with drivers for this standard currently, especially when you're also working with other standards. Before Windows Ink was implemented it was possible to fake touch rejection by rejecting 0 pressure strokes, but we work with 0 pressure strokes for mouse input (something a larger company who is writing software to showcase a touch screen may not care about) and we've also seen plenty of cases where a tablet sends data with 0 pressure due to driver oddities, so we've not gone down that road. We've also been talking to some driver developers who have suggested that the driver may start handling this kind of thing internally, which would immediately invalidate any time we spent on it anyway so we're waiting for more info on that.

So, to summarise: A larger company can cope with the standards rollercoaster more easily, they just write another input system for the new standard, but that's a lot of work for a relatively small percentage of users so it's harder for us to adapt in the same way. We want to do touch rejection because it makes sense for users with touch input PCs, but our development efforts are currently focused on features for all users so we don't have the bandwidth right now to completely rewrite the input system. It's not a pleasant thing for me to have to say, because I don't want to give the impression that we don't care (we do!), it's just a practical reality of being a small company in an environment where the OS vendor keeps deciding to change things under you and expects you to keep up. As soon as we get some time to look in to it further we will, we just have to prioritise development time in other areas right now.

Hey Matt,

THanks a bunch for taking the time to spell that out. It really makes a lot of stuff clear. Until you wrote that I hadn't realized the total device range that has to be supported. Keeping up with everything sounds like it might be just shy of insanity.

Also, just a quick idea. Have you thought about moving the updates to an a la carte crowdfunded system? I.e. Similar to what Krita does for instance? Here's their current campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-2016-lets-make-text-and-vector-art-awesome

...just an Idea...

Regardless... Matt, thanks a bunch for the app and your continued efforts.

Thanks a bunch.

Cheers

sastian
12-13-2016, 06:55 PM
ive actually stopped using artrage and stopped suggesting it to my students and friends due to the response i got last time i made a completely valid question. the rudeness was deafening.

all that aside. i watched a video of a user beta testing 5. and even HE wanted the feature i mentioned ... brought it up twice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuVvS3UVXmM

Since this is a new build... is it being addressed or do i have to spend $40 to find out?

HannahRage
12-13-2016, 07:14 PM
Also, just a quick idea. Have you thought about moving the updates to an a la carte crowdfunded system? I.e. Similar to what Krita does for instance? Here's their current campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-2016-lets-make-text-and-vector-art-awesome

Kickstarter wouldn't really work for us because ArtRage is already our fulltime job(s) and we don't need to fund further development on it, because we're already doing that (most 'start ups' like this use kickstarter to get the money to just not have to have a job while working on it - we can't exactly quit supporting ArtRage to go develop new stuff for ArtRage, even if we wanted to ;) ). Even if fundraising was a thing that helped, we can't promise specific features like this because we couldn't guarantee it would actually work out.



ive actually stopped using artrage and stopped suggesting it to my students and friends due to the response i got last time i made a completely valid question. the rudeness was deafening.

all that aside. i watched a video of a user beta testing 5. and even HE wanted the feature i mentioned ... brought it up twice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuVvS3UVXmM

Since this is a new build... is it being addressed or do i have to spend $40 to find out?

I'm sorry to hear that you're no longer using ArtRage, but you posted directly after a post explaining in extensive technical detail why this feature is an issue and unlikely to be something we add from our end. I'm not really sure what you expect us to say, given you've asked several times and have received the same answer every time.

I'm not sure exactly if Borodante is having the same issue; it seems like gestures just aren't working for him at all, but we're always happy to support individual users with tech problems via [email protected]

If we do ever manage to add it, or Wacom/OS updates mean it becomes automatic, it's something we'll be announcing very loudly - or at worst, you can try the free demo instead of spending actual money.

thedayismine
12-15-2016, 12:53 PM
Hey Hannah,
Ok Cool. I just thought that i'd throw out the kickstarter idea...

I watched the beta video. IT looks really cool. Do you still need any testers?

Thanks

HannahRage
12-15-2016, 04:44 PM
Sorry! We keep our beta testing pool really small, because we can only process so many issues at a time - we know we have a lot of fantastic artists who would love to beta test, but it's mostly finished by now.

nekomata
12-15-2016, 08:16 PM
ive actually stopped using artrage and stopped suggesting it to my students and friends due to the response i got last time i made a completely valid question. the rudeness was deafening.

all that aside. i watched a video of a user beta testing 5. and even HE wanted the feature i mentioned ... brought it up twice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuVvS3UVXmM

Since this is a new build... is it being addressed or do i have to spend $40 to find out?

have u considered purchasing an ipad pro w. apple pencil if you really need on-screen painting tool on a budget and you already made a mistake going with microsoft's hardware abortion