Discussion: Disable Artist Mode smoothing with libinput quirks file

[gonX]

By default, libinput smooths all tablet input, even if it is smoothed by OpenTabletDriver already.

I propose adding the following quirks to begin with:

[OpenTabletDriver Virtual Tablets]
MatchName=OpenTabletDriver*
AttrTabletSmoothing=0

The file path should be /usr/share/libinput/30-vendor-opentabletdriver.quirks

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Arguments for disabling libinput smoothing by default:

• Raw(er) input
• Artist mode now handles like absolute mode (as absolute mode is detected as an absolute mouse rather as an tablet device)
• User still has flexibility to re-enable it, as more users may be interested keeping it disabled, rather than having it enabled.

Valid arguments against disabling the smoothing provided by libinput:

• Does not match upstream behavior with other tablets (ie. tablet will feel different from stock driver)
• Can make further configuration (e.g. OpenTabletDriver plugins) mandatory for chattery or otherwise inaccurate tablets, adding to an already somewhat complicated install process

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Sadly exposing this as an easy user-controlled setting is ambitious as it seems we can only do this in packaging, requiring the user to have root permissions to set local quirk overrides, or root permissions to repackage with their preferred settings..

Down the line I would like to see something like OpenTabletDriver/OpenTabletDriver#1983 being implemented as well, so this would just be a stopgap solution until then (though, the user would still need root). With that in place, users would be able to generate their own quirks file that could re-enable the smoothing if they so desire.