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Thread: Option to disable TOUCH DRAWING, please (Surface Pro 3)

  1. #11
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    Nov 2013
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    Quote Originally Posted by thedayismine View Post
    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

  2. #12
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    Oct 2016
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    1
    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.

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    New Zealand
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    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.

  4. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by MattRage View Post
    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...or-art-awesome

    ...just an Idea...

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

    Thanks a bunch.

    Cheers

  5. #15

    dare i ask.

    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?

  6. #16
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
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    Quote Originally Posted by thedayismine View Post
    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...or-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.


    Quote Originally Posted by sastian View Post
    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.

  7. #17
    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

  8. #18
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
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    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.

  9. #19
    Join Date
    Oct 2016
    Posts
    296
    Quote Originally Posted by sastian View Post
    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

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