I have a drawing tablet (wacom intuos4) which I use on my laptop, when I’m at my desk I plug into a 24" monitor and extend the desktop (Kubuntu/Plasma) to the right. When I use my drawing tablet the drawing boundaries are aligned to the entire desktop stretched over two screens. I want to be able to restrict the tablet drawing area to just a single screen, the monitor.
I’m using linux (Kubuntu) so I shall map a device to a screen.
First we need to know what our displays are and our inputs are, we can get them from xinput --list
$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ MOSART Semi. 2.4G Wireless Mouse Mouse id=9 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen stylus id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pad pad id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Microsoft Natural® Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad id=16 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint id=17 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen eraser id=19 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen cursor id=20 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Sleep Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Integrated Camera: Integrated C id=10 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Microsoft Natural® Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 id=13 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=15 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ ThinkPad Extra Buttons id=18 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Microsoft Natural® Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 id=21 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ 40:EF:4C:96:24:94 id=22 [slave keyboard (3)]
We’re after the ids of the wacom devices in this case - to be sure we can run:
$ xinput | grep -i Wacom
⎜ ↳ Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen stylus id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pad pad id=12 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen eraser id=19 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen cursor id=20 [slave pointer (2)]
then we need to find the id of the display device we are going to map to
$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3926 x 1848, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS-1 connected primary 1366x768+0+1080 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 310mm x 174mm
1366x768 59.98*+
1360x768 59.80 59.96
1280x720 60.00 59.99 59.86 59.74
1024x768 60.04 60.00
960x720 60.00
928x696 60.05
896x672 60.01
1024x576 59.95 59.96 59.90 59.82
VGA-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-2 connected 1920x1080+1366+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 527mm x 296mm
1920x1200 59.95
1920x1080 60.00* 60.00 50.00 59.94
1920x1080i 60.00 50.00 59.94
1680x1050 59.88
1600x900 60.00
1280x1024 60.02
1440x900 59.90
1280x720 60.00 60.00 50.00 59.94
1024x768 60.00
HDMI-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
Now I’m going to map input devices 11, 12, 19 and 20 to display device HDMI-2
$ xinput map-to-output 11 HDMI-2
$ xinput map-to-output 12 HDMI-2
$ xinput map-to-output 19 HDMI-2
$ xinput map-to-output 20 HDMI-2
slightly alternative method
If you have xsetwacom installed then the alternative route is to use xsetwacom set <input name> "MapToOutput" <display name>
eg:
$ xsetwacom set "Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen stylus" "MapToOutput" HDMI-2
$ xsetwacom set "Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pad pad" "MapToOutput" HDMI-2
$ xsetwacom set "Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen eraser" "MapToOutput" HDMI-2
$ xsetwacom set "Wacom Intuos4 8x13 Pen cursor" "MapToOutput" HDMI-2