This is a database of tablets the DIGImend project has encountered and catalogued, and is used for general reference during development, tracking of driver support, and also for displaying on the DIGImend website.
An important part of cataloguing is finding out which name to use for a tablet. Tablets are often made by one company, and then rebranded and sold by another company under another name. They can also use hardware shared by other tablet models from the same company or tablets from other companies, and be somewhat different in looks, but the same in functionality.
In the end it's necessary to decide whether to catalogue a tablet as an entirely new tablet, or as a rebranding, or a version of another one, already in the database. The tablets can be considered to be the same based on the following:
lsusb -v output for the tablet is mostly the same. idVendor,
idProduct, iManufacturer, iProduct and iSerial fields can differ.Unfortunately, manufacturers started reusing USB VID:PID pairs for different models, even across different companies, and now it is not possible to identify tablets based on that.
Sometimes tablets are sold under one name, but can report a different name in
their USB device descriptors. For example, a tablet purchased under name
"Genius MousePen 8x6" had the following in the lsusb -v output:
iManufacturer 1 UC-LOGIC
iProduct 2 Tablet WP8060UHere the iManufacturer field set by the tablet's hardware manufacturer
says that it was made by UC-Logic, and the iProduct field says the model
name is WP8060U. In this case the tablet should be named "UC-Logic WP8060U".
The general rule of thumb is go as close to the hardware manufacturer's name
as possible.
When two or more new tablets are added to the database, which are the same
but are sold under different names, they should be given a name of the first
one appearing on the market. The other names should be added to the sold_as
field. If you're cataloguing a tablet which is very likely to be the same as
another, but cannot verify that, add its name to the maybe_sold_as field.
Each tablet can have an identifier formed from its manufacturer or primary seller's name, and the model name assigned by them. Tablet identifiers are used to name tablet directories and photo files.
To produce an identifier take each name, replace every space with an
underscore character (_), remove any special characters, or replace them
with a word (e.g. replace " with inch), and then put the
manufacturer/seller name in front, followed by an underscore, followed by the
model name. Preserve the original character case. Add extra identifying
information (such as version) after another underscore.
E.g. "Waltop Slim Tablet 12.1"" would become Waltop_Slim_Tablet_12.1_inch,
"Yiynova MVP10UHD+IPS" would become Yiynova_MVP10UHD+IPS, and version three
of "UC-Logic TWHA60" would become UC-Logic_TWHA60_v3.
Photos should be of sufficient resolution to discern tablet features, such as number and location of buttons on the frame and pen, symbols or writing near the buttons, model name, etc. The tablet should preferably be flat towards the viewer, without distortion.
Store the photo in a file named with a tablet identifier corresponding to the
actual model on the photo. After you set the tablet image name in index.md,
you can generate the thumbnail image by executing ./gen-thumbs in the
repository's top directory. You will need to have imagemagick installed for
it to work.
Each tablet's information is stored in a directory named after tablet
identifier (see above). Each such directory must contain an index.md file,
and a photo of one of the tablet versions. The photo should be referred to
from the index.md file.
The index.md file is a Markdown file with a "YAML front matter" -
YAML data at the beginning of the file, surrounded by lines
with three dash characters (---), and described by a schema.
The "front matter" can be followed by a free-form tablet description or notes
in Markdown format.
The general directory structure is as follows:
index.md - tablet information, description and notes.descriptors.txt - lsusb -v output for the tablet.probe.txt - output of uclogic-probe (from
uclogic-tools).dumps - directory with USB, evdev, xinput traffic dumps.<PHOTO_ID>.jpg - photo of one of the tablet versions. Here, <PHOTO_ID>
is a tablet identifier formed from the name of the tablet on the photo.<PHOTO_ID>.thumb.jpg - smaller version of the photo for use in tablet
lists, generated by gen-thumbs in the top directory.rd - directory with report descriptors as output by usbhid-dump -ed,
with each interface's descriptor in its own file named original<N>.txt,
where <N> is the interface number (last number before DESCRIPTOR in
usbhid-dump output).See Collecting tablet diagnostics HOWTO for instructions on collecting most of the above.
Before submitting tablet information, please run ./validate in the top
directory to verify the data structure. You will need to have kwalify
installed for it to work.
Before submitting please test if the DIGImend website can display your tablet. Follow the instructions in the website repo to start the server on your local machine, apply your changes to the tablets repo sub-module, and see if they make sense. It's also easier to make the tablets changes under the website repo from the start.