Sublime Forum

Selecting by dragging with Wacom tablet

#1

Hi,

This is why I keep returning to Dreamweaver, but I’m persisting a bit more as I really like Sublime Text 2. I use a Wacom Bamboo tablet instead of a mouse, but within Sublime Edit 2 I can’t select text properly by dragging the cursor. Here’s what happens…

Say I’ve got this text open in a tab:

<php echo "some text"; ?>

and I want to select the words ‘some text’, if I start a drag after the last ‘t’ and drag until the beginning of the ‘s’, the result will only be 'some ’ is selected. It’s four or five characters that seem to be missed from the beginning of the drag each time. It doesn’t matter which direction, left, right, up or down, the result is the same.

Placing the cursor with the pen is fine and as accurate as it should be. It’s just this dragging.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Clive

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#2

I have no problem with my Wacoms on Mac. I have a bamboo and an intuos.

Maybe you release the pen slightly after clicking the first time, and that generates an “unclick” and then another “click” of your pen. Hence that starts the selection later in the movement. You could activate the click sound in wacom preferences, and see if you are indeed generating “false clicks”.

You could also try to switch to clicking with the buttons on your thumb (instead of the pen point), and see if that changes anything… maybe your pen is the one giving problems.

AFAIK Wacom drivers generate mouse events in the OS, so I don’t think the problem lies in ST. I don’t think ST can distinguish between a mouse and a tablet.

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#3

I am also experiencing the same issue with ‘dragging to select’ with my Intuos 3 6x8 Wacom tablet. For text to be selected as intended, it is necessary to click (with a pen press) and hold until the cursor moves into position, and then drag. The issue does not occur in Sublime Text 2 when using the Wacom mouse on my tablet, and does not occur (with the pen) in any other text editing program. Any help appreciated! (Or suggestions for another editor - I am trying to find a replacement for Macromedia HomeSite.)

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#4

Nope. Not that. You’d have thought that after five years of using a Pen I’d know how to use it properly…

[quote=“pier”]You could also try to switch to clicking with the buttons on your thumb (instead of the pen point), and see if that changes anything… maybe your pen is the one giving problems.
AFAIK Wacom drivers generate mouse events in the OS, so I don’t think the problem lies in ST. I don’t think ST can distinguish between a mouse and a tablet.[/quote]

It’s not the pen. In five years, I haven’t experienced this in any other program. I think it’s something to do with ST in Windows. I’ve recently upgraded to Windows 8 Pro and continue to experience it, even with a brand new download of ST.

This does not work for me. Any of the developers aware of this?

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#5

Hi all, just jumping in to say I’m experiencing exactly the same, with Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch (CTH-670 if that’s relevant).

The behaviour outlined above, which appears to be just a delay before the cursor ‘recognises’ I’m doing a drag select, gives the result that the first few letters of your selection get ignored. Seems to always be the same number of characters (5) that are ignored, regardless of how carefully I click / how slowly I drag.

For a while I thought it was the Windows 8 ‘hold pen click so it turns into a right click option’, as that seems to give me this same delayed drag problem system wide when it’s enabled, but that was the first thing to get disabled. So now dragging around the system is fine with that off, but ST2 still gives us the delayed drag issue.

Just while I’m writing and testing this though, I notice that when drag selecting text elsewhere in Windows, the selection highlight will not actually begin until we’ve selected more than those 5 letters (at which point all other windows programs ‘snap back’ the highlight and begin the selection at the correct place.

In other words, I’m unable to drag select less than 5 characters at a time in Windows.

At that, I’m inclined to think this is a Wacom / Windows issue at play here, but I’ll post this here in the hope it helps someone.

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#6

Hey all, just to follow up.

Rebooted into OS X, no problems present at all. Figures as I got my tablet after recommendation from a mac user, and it operated flawlessly on his setup. Had hackintosh, did tablet, didn’t notice this issue for a month.

Either way it just looks to me like whereas every other windows application compensates for the drag by snapping back the selection after a few characters (try it), Sublime isn’t recognising this. Sublime devs, it doesn’t sound like this is your problem to sort, rather some wierd idiosyncracy between Windows and Wacom. Wacom forums are full of complaints about other apps not registering clicks / drags properly.

Wacom + Windows users, the rest of the discussion looks to be over here > http://forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?t=10988&p=46123

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#7

Hey there, didn’t see if anyone fixed this (busy working hah)

But there is a issue with win8 and Intuos 5. I have it with adobe products and sublime text 2.

A fix:

Go to your wacom pen properties and change the (click) button (i had to click this a few times to wake it up)
change this to modifiers> “click left” (don’t tick anything else)

This should in theory ork the same as the “click” option but it doesn’t, it has fixed the problem selecting text in ST2 for me as well as half fixing indesign.

yay hope it helps…

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#8

forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?f=2 … 831#p48831

This link has an update on the problem… possible fix.

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#9

Hello,

Sorry for my bad English, I’m french :smile:
I finally found where the problem of drag delay with sublime text and wacom tablets !
There is a conflict with the “Pen and Touch” feature in Windows 8 & 8.1 and the Wacom driver.

To solve the problem:
Go to Control Panel> Pen and Touch>

In the “Option Pen” tab:

  • Uncheck the 2 boxes “Use the pen button as a click with the right mouse button” & “Use the top of the pen to erase writing …”
  • Select “Hold”> Click “Settings” button> uncheck “Enable Hold mode when clicking with the right button.”

In the “Shortcut” tab:
Uncheck “Use shortcuts to perform common actions quickly and easily”

Drag delay solved!

Following the resolution of this problem, I had another problem of latency to close Microsoft software (Words, Excel, Outlook …). To solve this new problem is very simple:
Go to the properties of the Wacom> Grip pen> corespondance> bottom shelf, uncheck “Use Windows handwritten input.”

PS : I use a Windows 8.1 PC & Wacom Intuos 4.

Arno

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#10

Hi all,

Just installed my new Intuos tablet today, on a Win 8 machine that is fully updated. I noticed this selection issue in Sublime right away, so it is still an ongoing problem, and the last suggestion for fixing it seems not to be possible in the settings any more, or else I’m not understanding properly.

But … I did luck into a crappy workaround. If you start your drag basically on the line above where you want to select, drag down to the line you do want to select, and then begin left or right dragging to make the selection, it will highlight beginning where you want. Hope that will help some of you! And maybe this identification will help either Wacom or Sublime figure out a way to fix it.

Cheers!

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#11

[quote=“arno”]
To solve the problem:
Go to Control Panel> Pen and Touch>

In the “Option Pen” tab:

  • Uncheck the 2 boxes “Use the pen button as a click with the right mouse button” & “Use the top of the pen to erase writing …”
  • Select “Hold”> Click “Settings” button> uncheck “Enable Hold mode when clicking with the right button.”

In the “Shortcut” tab:
Uncheck “Use shortcuts to perform common actions quickly and easily”

PS : I use a Windows 8.1 PC & Wacom Intuos 4.[/quote]

I just wanted to report that this issue was still occurring for me with Windows 10, Sublime 3, and a Wacom Pro of some sort.

Arno’s post gave me the solution, and I wanted to share the joy with any others who might end up here via a frustrated Google search. The exact thing that did the trick was to disable shortcuts/Flick.

It’s worth noting that you probably don’t want to disable “Use pen button to click”, but hey, you’re your own person right. You can do as you damn well please! :smile:

Anyway, thanks Arno!

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#12

I know this is an old post, but I recently had the same issue. The issue is indeed related to some conflict between native windows driver and Wacom. I solved my Sublime text select issue by doing the following:

  1. Make sure you have the latest Wacom driver installed for your windows desktop (I have windows 10)
  2. Open the Wacom control panel (search for it by entering “Wacom Tablet Properties” in Windows search box)
  3. Select your pen from the tools
  4. Click the Mapping tab
  5. In the bottom left corner of that tablet mapping (Unselect the “Use Windows Ink” option.)

Now selection will be perfect. You will also find that text select from your other apps will also be more accurate.

Enjoy.

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#13

Unbelievable. June 2017 and this is still a thing. I love Sublime Text and my Wacom tablet, and I use them every day, so it made me very happy to finally get rid of this annoying issue following the instructions that arno and itypewithmyhands shared (merci and thanks to them).

I just went to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Pen and Touch > Flicks and I disabled Use flicks to perform common actions… and ta-daaan: fixed!

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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#14

Hey guys, dont know if you’ve got the solution yet, but I guess I got it.
I was having the same issue here before!

Try this:

-Open Wacom Desktop Center app
-Go to your custom pen settings
-On the tab PEN, click on OPTIONS down on the window
-A new window will open
-There we’ll have 2 options, first one is something like VARIABLE CLICK (this option should be selected by default) and the second one is CLICK AND TOUCH.
-Select the second option (CLICK AND TOUCH) and you may be ready to go!
-Save your settings! =D

Note: my software is in portuguese, so I translated it myself. Try not to look for those EXACT WORDS.

bye.

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#15

If I understand the problem correctly, the solution is on the link.

I hope it will be work.

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#17

I have solved the same issue with my xp-pen Deco 03 wireless drawing tablet , thank you for your sharing .

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