Rotation

The wacom driver supports rotation by 90 degree angles. The rotation can be either applied statically (through the [[Configuring X|configuration files]]) or at runtime (e.g. through xsetwacom). {{Tip|text=Prior to xf86-input-wacom-0.11.0 rotation was tool-specific. It was necessary to rotate each input tool separately as the following examples show. For the new Rotate parameter simply chose the one input tool you prefer to rotate.}} The four valid settings are:

• '''none''': the tablet is not rotated in software and uses its natural rotation.
• '''half''': the tablet is rotated by 180 degrees (upside-down)
• '''cw''': the tablet is rotated 90 degrees clockwise
• '''ccw''': the tablet is rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise

Note that rotation is a tablet-wide option. If you rotate one input tool all other tools associated with the same tablet are rotated to the same orientation.

== Examples ==

=== Left Handed Tablet Orientation === The Bamboo Pen & Touch will be used as an example since it has three tools: stylus, eraser, and touch. Find the "Device names" using in a terminal:

xinput list

The "Device name" for stylus might be "Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Pen stylus". It will be without the quotes but you need the quotes for the xsetwacom command. And so on for eraser and touch. Once the "Device names" are determined use them in xsetwacom commands like so:

xsetwacom set "Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Pen stylus" rotate half 

xsetwacom set "Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Pen eraser" rotate half

xsetwacom set "Wacom BambooFun 2FG 4x5 Finger touch" rotate half

While the xsetwacom settings will apply once entered into a terminal they will not last through a restart. For that you could create an executable script with the commands and add it to your Startup Applications.

=== Tablet PC Rotation Script === Again determine your "Device names" with 'xinput list' as in the example above. Then substitute them for stylus, eraser, and touch (if you have it) in the following shell script. Only use the xsetwacom commands for the devices you have.

#!/bin/sh

# Find the line in "xrandr -q --verbose" output that contains current screen orientation and "strip" out current orientation.

rotation="$(xrandr -q --verbose | grep 'connected' | egrep -o  '\) (normal|left|inverted|right) \(' | egrep -o '(normal|left|inverted|right)')"

# Using current screen orientation proceed to rotate screen and input devices.

case "$rotation" in
    normal)
    # rotate to the left
    xrandr -o left
    xsetwacom set stylus rotate ccw
    xsetwacom set eraser rotate ccw
    xsetwacom set touch rotate ccw
    ;;
    left)
    # rotate to inverted
    xrandr -o inverted
    xsetwacom set stylus rotate half
    xsetwacom set eraser rotate half
    xsetwacom set touch rotate half
    ;;
    inverted)
    # rotate to the right
    xrandr -o right
    xsetwacom set stylus rotate cw
    xsetwacom set eraser rotate cw
    xsetwacom set touch rotate cw
    ;;
    right)
    # rotate to normal
    xrandr -o normal
    xsetwacom set stylus rotate none
    xsetwacom set eraser rotate none
    xsetwacom set touch rotate none
    ;;
esac

This will cause the screen to rotate through 360 degrees counter-clockwise in four 90 degree steps. Again place the script in an executable file. You could then add it to a launcher or bind a key to the script. If you drag the launcher into a panel it will execute with a single click. Of course you can easily simplify the script to only rotate to one preferred direction when in tablet mode and back to none when in laptop mode.