touchscreen-helper – Improve Touchscreen support in Linux

touchscreen-helper is an application which runs in the background and improves the functionality of touchscreens in Linux (and other Operating Systems using the X Window System). It is written in C using Xrandr and XInput2. It provides the following features:

• Persistent user-level calibration: Calibration of the touchscreen can occur without root rights and will be stored and re-applied every time the touch-screen is re-attached
• Mapping between touch screen and output device: The touchscreen can be mapped to the output device (monitor) it is attached to. If an external monitor is plugged in and an extended Desktop is created, the touch screen calibration will automatically be adapted so all touches still occur at the right place on the mapped output device only. When the output device is rotated, calibration will be adapted as well.
• Handling of multiple touchscreens: touchscreen-helper maintains seperate mappings and calibrations for different touch screens on the same computer and automatically handles plugging/un-plugging of touchscreens on the fly.
• Easy to use graphical user interface: gtouchsett is a control application for touchscreen-helper which allows setting the mapping and calibration in a user-friendly way. It is written in Vala/C and uses Gtk+/Glade for the user interface.

touchscreen-helper is currently under heavy development. Most of it already works, but there still are some things to do. If you have questions, recommendations or would like to help in some way, please don’t hesitate to write me a mail to linux AT philmerk DOT de.

Screenshot 

This is a screenshot of the current state of the control panel user interface. Most of the controls are already working:

The official project site can be found on http://plippo.de/touchscreen-tools.