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C library for filtering touchscreen events
tslib consists of the library libts and tools that help you calibrate and use it in your environment.
contact
If you have problems, questions, ideas or suggestions, please contact us by writing an email to , which is .
website
Visit the for an overview of the project.
table of contents
setup and configure tslib
install tslib
tslib runs on various hardware architectures and operating systems, including GNU/Linux, FreeBSD or Android/Linux. See for details. Apart from building the latest tarball release, running ./configure
, make
and make install
, tslib is available from distributors like / , , / , or and their package management.
configure tslib
This is just an example /etc/ts.conf
file. Touch samples flow from top to bottom. Each line specifies one module and it's parameters. Modules are processed in order. Use one module_raw on top, that accesses your device, followed by any combination of filter modules.
module_raw inputmodule median depth=3module dejitter delta=100module linear
see the for available filters and their parameters. On Linux, your first commented-in line should always be module_raw input
which offers one optional parameter: grab_events=1
if you want it to execute EVIOCGRAB on the device.
With this configuration file, we end up with the following data flow through the library:
driver --> raw read --> median --> dejitter --> linear --> application (using ts_read_mt()) module module module module
calibrate the touch screen
Calibration is done by the linear
plugin, which uses it's own config file /etc/pointercal
. Don't edit this file manually. It is created by the program:
# ts_calibrate
The calibration procedure simply requires you to touch the cross on screen, where is appears, as accurate as possible.
test the filtered input behaviour
You may quickly test the touch behaviour that results from the configured filters, using :
# ts_test_mt
On the bottom left of the screen, you see the available concurrent touch contacts supported, and whether it's because the driver says so, or ts_test_mt was started with the -j
commandline option to overwrite it.
environment variables (optional)
You may override defaults. In most cases you won't need to do so though:
TSLIB_TSDEVICE Touchscreen device file name. Default: automatic detection (on Linux)TSLIB_CALIBFILE Calibration file. Default: ${sysconfdir}/pointercalTSLIB_CONFFILE Config file. Default: ${sysconfdir}/ts.confTSLIB_PLUGINDIR Plugin directory. Default: ${datadir}/pluginsTSLIB_CONSOLEDEVICE Console device. (not needed when using --with-sdl2) Default: /dev/ttyTSLIB_FBDEVICE Framebuffer device. Default: /dev/fb0
use the filtered result in your system (X.org method)
If you're using X.org graphical X server, things should be very easy. Install tslib and , reboot, and you should instantly have your ts.conf
filters running, without configuring anything else yourself.
use the filtered result in your system (ts_uinput method)
TL;DR: Run tools/ts_uinput_start.sh
during startup and use /dev/input/ts_uinput
as your evdev input device.
tslib tries to automatically find your touchscreen device in /dev/input/event*
on Linux. Now make ts_uinput
use it, instead of your graphical environment directly:
# ts_uinput -d -v
-d
makes the program return and run as a daemon in the background. -v
makes it print the new /dev/input/eventX
device node before returning.
Now make your graphical environmen use that new event device, using evdev drivers.
-
For Qt5 for example you'd probably set something like this:
QT_QPA_GENERIC_PLUGINS=evdevtouch:/dev/input/eventX QT_QPA_EVDEV_TOUCHSCREEN_PARAMETERS=/dev/input/eventX:rotate=0
-
For X11 you'd probably edit your
xorg.conf
Section "InputDevice"
for your touchscreen to haveOption "Device" "/dev/input/eventX"
-
For Wayland, you'd make libinput use the new
/dev/input/eventX
and so on. Please see your system's documentation on how to use a specific evdev input device.
Let's recap the data flow here:
driver --> raw read --> filter(s) ... --> ts_uinput --> libevdev read --> GUI app/toolkit module module(s) ... daemon e.g. in libinput
symlink /dev/input/ts_uinput to the new event file
/dev/input/event numbers are not persistent. In order to know in advance, what enumerated input device file is created by ts_uinput
, you can use a symlink:
-
use the included
tools/ts_uinput_start.sh
script that startsts_uinput -d -v
and creates the symlink called/dev/input/ts_uinput
for you, or -
if you're using systemd, create the following udev rule, for example
/etc/udev/rules.d/98-touchscreen.rules
:SUBSYSTEM=="input", KERNEL=="event[0-9]*", ATTRS{name}=="ts_uinput", SYMLINK+="input/ts_uinput"
running as systemd service (optional)
in case you have to use non-default paths, create a file containing the environment for tslib, like /etc/ts.env
TSLIB_CALIBFILE=/etc/pointercal TSLIB_CONFFILE=/etc/ts.conf TSLIB_PLUGINDIR=/usr/lib/ts
and create a systemd service file, like /usr/lib/systemd/system/ts_uinput.service
[Unit] Description=touchscreen input Wants=dev-input-ts_raw.device After=dev-input-ts_raw.device [Service] Type=oneshot EnvironmentFile=/etc/ts.env ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'exec /usr/bin/ts_uinput &> /var/log/ts_uinput.log' [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
and
#systemctl enable ts_uinput
will enable it permanently.
other operating systems
There is no tool that we know of that reads tslib samples and uses the , for example (yet).
filter modules
module: linear
Linear scaling - calibration - module, primerily used for conversion of touch screen co-ordinates to screen co-ordinates. It applies the corrections as recorded and saved by the tool. It's the only module that reads a configuration file.
Parameters (usually not needed):
-
xyswap
interchange the X and Y co-ordinates -- no longer used or needed if the linear calibration utility
ts_calibrate
is used. -
pressure_offset
offset applied to the pressure value. Default: 0
-
pressure_mul
factor to multiply the pressure value with. Default: 1.
-
pressure_div
value to divide the pressure value by. Default: 1.
Example: module linear
module: invert
Invert values in X and/or Y direction around the given value. There are no default values. If specified, a value has to be set. If one axis is not specified, it's simply untouched.
Parameters:
-
x0
X-axis (horizontal) value around which to invert.
-
y0
Y-axis (vertical) value around which to invert.
Example: module invert y0=640
(Y-axis inverted for 640 screen height, X-axis untouched)
module: median
The median filter reduces noise in the samples' coordinate values. It is able to filter undesired single large jumps in the signal. For some theory, see
Parameters:
-
depth
Number of samples to apply the median filter to. Default: 3.
Example: module median depth=5
module: pthres
Pressure threshold filter. Given a release is always pressure 0 and a press is always >= 1, this discards samples below / above the specified pressure threshold.
Parameters:
-
pmin
Minimum pressure value for a sample to be valid. Default: 1.
-
pmax
Maximum pressure value for a sample to be valid. Default: (
INT_MAX
).
Example: pthres pmin=10
module: iir
Infinite impulse response filter. This is a smoothing filter to remove low-level noise. There is a trade-off between noise removal (smoothing) and responsiveness. The parameters N and D specify the level of smoothing in the form of a fraction (N/D).
has some theory.
Parameters:
-
N
numerator of the smoothing fraction. Default: 0.
-
D
denominator of the smoothing fraction. Default: 1.
Example: module iir N=6 D=10
module: dejitter
Removes jitter on the X and Y co-ordinates. This is achieved by applying a weighted smoothing filter. The latest samples have most weight; earlier samples have less weight. This allows to achieve 1:1 input->output rate. See for some theory.
Parameters:
-
delta
Squared distance between two samples ((X2-X1)^2 + (Y2-Y1)^2) that defines the 'quick motion' threshold. If the pen moves quick, it is not feasible to smooth pen motion, besides quick motion is not precise anyway; so if quick motion is detected the module just discards the backlog and simply copies input to output. Default: 100.
Example: module dejitter delta=100
module: debounce
Simple debounce mechanism that drops input events for the specified time after a touch gesture stopped. has more theory.
Parameters:
-
drop_threshold
drop events up to this number of milliseconds after the last release event. Default: 0.
Example: module debounce drop_threshold=40
module: skip
Skip nhead samples after press and ntail samples before release. This should help if for the device the first or last samples are unreliable.
Parameters:
-
nhead
Number of events to drop after pressure. Default: 1.
-
ntail
Number of events to drop before release. Default: 1.
Example: module skip nhead=2 ntail=1
module: lowpass
Simple lowpass exponential averaging filtering module.
Parameters:
-
factor
floating point value between 0 and 1; for example 0.2 for more smoothing or 0.8 for less. Default: 0.4.
-
threshold
x or y minimum distance between two samples to start applying the filter. Default: 2.
Example: module lowpass factor=0.5 threshold=1
module: variance
Variance filter. Tries to do it's best in order to filter out random noise coming from touchscreen ADC's. This is achieved by limiting the sample movement speed to some value (e.g. the pen is not supposed to move quicker than some threshold).
There is no multitouch support for this filter (yet). ts_read_mt()
will limit your input to one slot when this filter is used. Try using the median filter instead.
Parameters:
-
delta
Set the squared distance in touchscreen units between previous and current pen position (e.g. (X2-X1)^2 + (Y2-Y1)^2). This defines the criteria for determining whenever two samples are 'near' or 'far' to each other.
Now if the distance between previous and current sample is 'far', the sample is marked as 'potential noise'. This doesn't mean yet that it will be discarded; if the next reading will be close to it, this will be considered just a regular 'quick motion' event, and it will sneak to the next layer. Also, if the sample after the 'potential noise' is 'far' from both previously discussed samples, this is also considered a 'quick motion' event and the sample sneaks into the output stream.
The following example setup
|--------| |-----| |--------------|x ---> | median | ----> | IIR | ---> | | ---> x' |--------| -> |-----| | screen | | | transform | | | (calibrate) | |--------| | |-----| | |y ---> | median | ----> | IIR | ---> | | ---> y' |--------| |-> |-----| |--------------| | | |----------|p ---------> | debounce | -------------------------------> p' |----------|
would be achieved by the following ts.conf:
module_raw inputmodule debounce drop_threshold=40module median depth=5module iir N=6 D=10module linear
while you are free to play with the parameter values.
screen rotation
The graphical tools support rotating the screen, see ts_calibrate --help
or the man pages for the details. Note that this only rotates the framebuffer output. Rotating the input samples is a different task that has to be done by the linear filter module (re-calibrating or re-loading with different parameters).
the libts library
the libts API
The API is documented in our man pages in the doc directory. Check out our tests directory for examples how to use it.
ts_option()
ts_load_module()
using libts
To use the library from C or C++, include the following preprocessor directive in your source files:
#include
To link with with library, specify -lts
as an argument to the linker.
compiling using autoconf and pkg-config
On UNIX systems you can use pkg-config to automatically select the appropriate compiler and linker switches for libts. The PKG_CHECK_MODULES
m4 macro may be used to automatically set the appropriate Makefile variables:
PKG_CHECK_MODULES([TSLIB], [tslib >= 1.10],, AC_MSG_ERROR([libts 1.10 or newer not found.]))
If you want to support tslib < 1.2, while still support multitouch and all recent versions of tslib, you'd do something like this:
#include#ifndef TSLIB_VERSION_MT /* ts_read() as before (due to old tslib) */#else /* new ts_setup() and ret = ts_read_mt() */ if (ret == -ENOSYS) /* ts_read() as before (due to user config) */#endif
This is a complete example program, similar to ts_print_mt.c
:
#include#include #include #include #include #include #include #define SLOTS 5#define SAMPLES 1int main(int argc, char **argv){ struct tsdev *ts; char *tsdevice = NULL; struct ts_sample_mt **samp_mt = NULL; struct input_absinfo slot; int ret, i, j; ts = ts_setup(tsdevice, 0); if (!ts) { perror("ts_setup"); return -1; } samp_mt = malloc(SAMPLES * sizeof(struct ts_sample_mt *)); if (!samp_mt) { ts_close(ts); return -ENOMEM; } for (i = 0; i < SAMPLES; i++) { samp_mt[i] = calloc(SLOTS, sizeof(struct ts_sample_mt)); if (!samp_mt[i]) { free(samp_mt); ts_close(ts); return -ENOMEM; } } while (1) { ret = ts_read_mt(ts, samp_mt, SLOTS, SAMPLES); if (ret < 0) { perror("ts_read_mt"); ts_close(ts); exit(1); } for (j = 0; j < ret; j++) { for (i = 0; i < SLOTS; i++) { #ifdef TSLIB_MT_VALID if (!(samp_mt[j][i].valid & TSLIB_MT_VALID) continue; #else if (samp_mt[j][i].valid < 1) continue; #endif printf("%ld.%06ld: (slot %d) %6d %6d %6d\n", samp_mt[j][i].tv.tv_sec, samp_mt[j][i].tv.tv_usec, samp_mt[j][i].slot, samp_mt[j][i].x, samp_mt[j][i].y, samp_mt[j][i].pressure); } } } ts_close(ts);}
If you know how many slots your device can handle, you could avoid malloc:
struct ts_sample_mt TouchScreenSamples[SAMPLES][SLOTS];struct ts_sample_mt (*pTouchScreenSamples)[SLOTS] = TouchScreenSamples;struct ts_sample_mt *ts_samp[SAMPLES];for (i = 0; i < SAMPLES; i++) ts_samp[i] = pTouchScreenSamples[i];
and call ts_read_mt()
like so
ts_read_mt(ts, ts_samp, SLOTS, SAMPLES);
ABI - Application Binary Interface
has background information.
libts Soname versions
Usually, and every time until now, libts does not break the ABI and your application can continue using libts after upgrading. Specifically this is indicated by the libts library version's major number, which should always stay the same. According to our versioning scheme, the major number is incremented only if we break backwards compatibility. The second or third minor version will increase with releases. In the following example
libts.so -> libts.so.0.7.0libts.so.0 -> libts.so.0.7.0libts.so.0.7.0
use libts.so
for using tslib unconditionally and libts.so.0
to make sure your current application never breaks.
If a release includes changes like added features, the second number is incremented and the third is set to zero. If a release includes mostly just bugfixes, only the third number is incremented.
tslib package version
A tslib tarball version number doesn't tell you anything about it's backwards compatibility.
dependencies
- libc (with libdl only when building dynamically linked)
- libsdl2-dev (only when using
--with-sdl2
for graphical applications)
related libraries
- - access wrapper for access, uinput too ("Linux API")
- - handle input devices for Wayland (uses libevdev)
- - evdev plugin for X (uses libevdev)
libts users
This lists the programs for the every day use of tslib, facing the outside world. For testing purposes there are tools like too.
shipped as part of tslib
- - graphical calibration tool. Configures the
linear
filter module. - - userspace evdev driver for the tslib-filtered samples.
third party applications
- - direct tslib input driver for X11
- - direct Qt5 tslib input plugin
- - A Window Manager (direct support in framebuffer mode, X11 via xf86-input-tslib)
- - Graphics library on top of framebuffer
tslib module API
struct tslib_module_info
struct tslib_vars
struct tslib_ops
tslib_parse_vars(struct tslib_module_info *,const struct tslib_vars *, int, const char *);
tslib modules (filter or driver/raw module) in the plugins directory need to implement mod_init()
. If the module takes parameters, it has to declare a const struct tslib_vars
and pass that, it's lengths and the params string that is passed to mod_init
to tslib_parse_vars()
during mod_init()
.
Furthermore a const struct tslib_ops
has to be declared, with it's members pointing to the module's implementation of module-operations like read_mt
that get called in the chain of filters.
Symbols in Versions
Name | Introduced |
---|---|
TSLIB_VERSION_MT | 1.10 |
TSLIB_VERSION_OPEN_RESTRICTED | 1.13 |
TSLIB_VERSION_EVENTPATH | 1.15 |
TSLIB_MT_VALID | 1.13 |
TSLIB_MT_VALID_TOOL | 1.13 |
ts_libversion | 1.10 |
ts_close | 1.0 |
ts_config | 1.0 |
ts_reconfig | 1.3 |
ts_setup | 1.4 |
ts_error_fn | 1.0 |
ts_open_restricted | 1.13 |
ts_close_restricted | 1.13 |
ts_fd | 1.0 |
ts_load_module | 1.0 |
ts_open | 1.0 |
ts_option | 1.1 |
ts_read | 1.0 |
ts_read_mt | 1.3 |
ts_read_raw | 1.0 |
ts_read_raw_mt | 1.3 |
tslib_parse_vars | 1.0 |
ts_get_eventpath | 1.15 |
building tslib
shared vs. static builds
libts can be built to fit your needs. Use the configure script to enable only the modules you need. By default, libts is built as a shared library, with each module being a shared library object itself. You can, however, configure tslib to build libts statically linked, and the needed modules compiled inside of libts. Here's an example for this:
./configure --enable-static --disable-shared --enable-input=static --enable-linear=static --enable-iir=static
This should result in a libts.a
of roughly 50 kilobytes, ready for using calibration (linear filter) and the infinite impulse response filter in ts.conf.
portable ts_calibrate
and ts_test_mt
using SDL2
In case you cannot draw to the framebuffer directly, there is an experimental implentation of the necessary graphical tools using SDL2. They are more portable but require more resources to run. To use them, make sure you have SDL2 and the development headers installed and use ./configure --with-sdl2
.
portability
tslib is cross-platform; you should be able to build it on a large variety of operating systems.
libts and filter plugins (module
)
This is the hardware independent core part: libts and all filter modules as shared libraries, build on the following operating systems and probably more.
- GNU / Linux
- Android / Linux
- FreeBSD
- GNU / Hurd
- Haiku
- Windows
- Mac OS X
input plugins (module_raw
)
This makes the thing usable in the real world because it accesses your device. See for the currently possible configuration for your platform.
The libts default configuration currently has the following input modules disabled:
cy8mrln-palmpre
dmc_dus3000
galax
arctic2
corgi
collie
dmc
h3600
mk712
ucb1x00
Please note that this list may grow over time. If you rely on a particular input plugin, you should enable it explicitely. On Linux you should only need input
though.
- GNU / Linux - all (most importantly
input
)./configure
- Android / Linux - all (most importantly
input
)./configure
- FreeBSD - almost all (most importantly
input
)./configure --disable-waveshare
- GNU / Hurd - some, see
./configure --disable-input --disable-waveshare
- Haiku - some, see
./configure --disable-input --disable-touchkit --disable-waveshare
- Windows - no tslib module for the (yet)
./configure --with-sdl2 --disable-tatung --disable-input --disable-touchkit --disable-waveshare
Writing your own plugin is quite easy, in case an existing one doesn't fit.
test programs and tools
- GNU / Linux - all
- Android / Linux - all (?)
- FreeBSD - all (?)
- GNU / Hurd - ts_print_mt, ts_print, ts_print_raw, ts_finddev
- Haiku - ts_print_mt, ts_print, ts_print_raw, ts_finddev
- Windows - ts_print.exe, ts_print_raw.exe ts_print_mt.exe ts_test_mt.exe ts_calibrate.exe
download binaries?
For GNU/Linux all architectures are very well covered, thanks to Debian or Arch Linux or others.
If you're lucky, you'll find some unofficial testing builds for Windows or other platforms .
Please help porting missing programs!
touchscreen hardware support
TL;DR: On Linux, use module_raw input
For mostly historical reasons, tslib includes device specific module_raw
userspace drivers. The has details on the available module_raw
drivers; not all of them are listed in the default etc/ts.conf
config file. Those are to be considered workarounds and may get disabled in the default configuration in the future. If you use one of those, please ./configure --enable-...
it explicitely.
It is strongly recommended to have a real device driver for your system and use a generic access module_raw
of tslib. For Linux () this is called input
.