xwayland does not support wacom tablets

no, 1.20.0 will be released maybe around Nov/Dec, so too late

I'll check the patches if I can find my tablet somewhere..

I'm happy to test any patches for you if you can't find your tablet!

Just for fun, I tried applying the 9 patches I found against the xwayland source package and building/installing it (./configure, make, and sudo make install, as per the INSTALL file), but I don't think it installs properly, because "which Xwayland" says "/usr/local/bin/Xwayland", as it should, but even after a full reboot, I appear to be still running the default package:

$ ps xa|grep X
 1578 tty1 Sl+ 0:00 /usr/bin/Xwayland :1024 -rootless -noreset -listen 4 -listen 5 -displayfd 6
 2166 tty2 Sl+ 0:03 /usr/bin/Xwayland :0 -rootless -noreset -listen 4 -listen 5 -displayfd 6

Do you have any hints as to why this is so?

I've pushed a test version to ppa:canonical-x/x-staging

the path is hardcoded somewhere, not sure

Cool, the tablet works great now using that test version on Xwayland apps like gimp and firefox and chrome.

It's not quite perfect yet - drag doesn't work with Wayland apps. Using the tablet stylus, I can drag a chrome or firefox window by its menubar, but not nautilus or gnome-terminal. And sometimes after I try to drag, say, nautilus, I can't select the firefox window by clicking on it with the (non-tablet) mouse unless I first click on the nautilus window.

But it works way better than before, thanks.

Also, on wayland apps, the tablet stylus' right click works in the menubar but not the window contents. So if I right-click on gnome-terminal's menubar, I get the window menu, as expected, but if I right-click inside the window, nothing happens (I should instead see the window menu).

I imagine this is a separate bug, though, since it's nothing to do with xwayland.

I've pushed a new version (3.2) with some more xwayland backports, and some tablet fixes too.

Marvellous, that new version fixes a couple of issues in gimp - right-click drag using the stylus now scrolls, both the mouse and stylus cursor change to the selected tool now, and the mouse now works after using the stylus without having to click on another xwayland app first.

I guess I should log a separate bug against gnome-shell for the wayland apps not working properly with the tablet?

yeah probably so, thanks for testing

Actually, it's still not quite perfect in gimp even with version 3.2, eg:

* Open an image
* Select eg the rectangle select tool
* Select an area with the stylus
* At this point, the mouse usually doesn't work any more - eg try and select an area with the mouse or try and select another tool using the mouse.

If you select another app and come back to gimp (either using the mouse or with alt-tab), the mouse works again.

But the tablet is definitely usable now with xwayland apps.

This bug was fixed in the package xorg-server - 2:1.19.3-1ubuntu4

---------------
xorg-server (2:1.19.3-1ubuntu4) artful; urgency=medium

  * xwayland-tablet.diff: Add support for Wacom tablets in xwayland.
    (LP: #1712571)
  * xwayland-pointer-confine.diff: Add pointer locking/confinement fixes
    to xwayland.
  * xwayland-add-grab-protocol-support.diff: Add support for keyboard
    grabbing to xwayland. Bump wayland-protocols build-dependency to 1.9.

 -- Timo Aaltonen <email address hidden> Fri, 25 Aug 2017 08:32:17 +0300

The implementation looks promising but still seems incomplete. For instance, Xournal still works much better in a real X11 session than under XWayland. In the latter setting, the cursor does not display as the stylus hovers over the tablet so it's not possible to see where one is drawing until one actually applies pressure and and starts inking.

file a new bug then, and bonus points for filing one upstream too