Xorg Evdev Touchscreen Driver - plpevtch

Introduction

The plpevtch driver is an eventdevice driver for touchscreens under Xorg 7.x.

Why another touchscreen driver when evtouch already exists? I was using evtouch on my Flybook with Xorg 6.9 very long. But with Xorg 7.3 it was not working for me. Shortly I bought a touchscreen and I was not able to get it to work with evtouch. Then quickly I created this new driver and it works in the way I want. plpevtch is not a fork of evtouch.

Download

xf86-input-plpevtch-0.5.0.tar.gz (2010/05/25)

xf86-input-plpevtch-0.4.1.tar.gz (2010/04/17) SwapAxes added by Ken
xf86-input-plpevtch-0.4.0.tar.gz (2009/02/26)

Supported Hardware

I have only 2 different touchscreens, so i can only say that it works for those. But the driver should work with any other eventdev touchscreen kernel driver too.

The driver was successful tested on

USB Touchscreen eGalax (ID 0eef:0001 D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd eGalax TouchScreen)
Flybook Touchscreen PenmountLPC

Configuration

Important: its required that the evdev kernel module is loaded or builtin in your kernel!

Here is a sample configuration for Xorg 7.x xorg.conf

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "touchscreen"
    Driver    "plpevtch"

    Option "Device" "/dev/input/event3"	# <-- use the evdev name
					# see /proc/bus/input/devices for your eventX
    
#    Option "Calibrate" 	# <-- uncomment this line to calibrate
#    Option "Debug" 		# <-- uncomment this line for debug

#    Option "MinX" "67"
#    Option "MaxX" "1984"

#    Option "MinY" "42"
#    Option "MaxY" "1920"

#    Option "InvX"		# <-- uncomment this line to invert X
#    Option "InvY"		# <-- uncomment this line to invert Y

#    Option "RightClick" 	"False"	# <-- uncomment this line to disable right click
					# right click is enabled by default
#    Option "RightClickMS" 	"5000"	# make right click after 5 seconds without moving the cursor
					# default is 3 seconds
#    Option "RightClickSquare"  "10"	# allow moving in a square of 10x10 pixels when waiting for
					# right click
					
#    Option "TouchFilter" 	"False"	# <-- uncomment this line to disable touch filter
					# touch filter is enabled by default
#    Option "TouchFilterMS" 	"20"	# ignore press/release within 20ms, default is 10ms

#    Option "SwapAxes" 		"True"	# swap X/Y axis

#    Option "GrabDevice"        "True"  # force  a  grab on the event device. Doing so will ensure that no
	                                # other driver can initialise the same device
EndSection

add to the ServerLayout

Section "ServerLayout"

    Identifier  "Simple Layout"
    Screen "Screen 1"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"

    InputDevice "touchscreen" "Pointer"  # <--- add this to ServerLayout

EndSection

How to calibrate

add Option "Calibrate" to the touchscreen section
restart the X server
move along the borders of your touchscreen multiple times (ignore the mouse pointer). Its required to get the minimum and maximum values of your screen.
search /var/log/Xorg.0.log for the last 'plpevdev' and 'Calibrate'. You will see something like

(II) touchscreen: Calibrate | MinX: 67 | MaxX: 1984 | MinY: 42 | MaxY: 1920

use this values in the touchscreen section of your xorg.conf
remove the Calibrate Option in the touchscreen section
restart the X server

Install

If your Xorg is installed in /usr/X11R7 then run
./configure --prefix=/usr/X11R7 && make && make install

If your Xorg is installed in /usr then run
./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install