How can I track hover event of a Wacom Tablet?

Question

I thought of mapping some keys on the keyboard to mouse buttons, but only when tablet is active (pen is hovering over the tablet). Is there any way to track such event globally? I use Wacom Bamboo Pen&Touch tablet and Windows 7 SP1.

Answer 1

3.28. What tool can I use to determine if a tablet is sending messages? The hclient tool, in the WinDDK, is a good way to determine if your tablet is sending pen messages. This tool does not rely on Wintab; rather it connects to a tablet's HID descriptor, and so can monitor tablet data as it is sent from the HID kernel stack. Simply select the device from the list of HID devices that hclient has enumerated (note that the Vendor ID = 0x56a, which is for Wacom). Make sure that the Usage Page = 0xD, and the Usage = 0x1. Press the "Blocked Read Data" button at the bottom of the dialog, and press the "Continuous Asynchronous Read" button when the data dialog comes up. Touch the pen to the tablet to see the data.

And i think that the Raw input is more helpful for you: Raw Input Model

Previously, the keyboard and mouse typically generated input data. The system interpreted the data coming from these devices in a way that eliminated the device-specific details of the raw information. For example, the keyboard generates the device-specific scan code but the system provides an application with the virtual key code. Besides hiding the details of the raw input, the window manager did not support all the new HIDs. To get input from the unsupported HIDs, an application had to do many things: open the device, manage the shared mode, periodically read the device or set up the I/O completion port, and so forth.

The raw input model and the associated APIs were developed to allow simple access to raw input from all input devices, including the keyboard and mouse.

The raw input model is different from the original Windows input model for the keyboard and mouse. In the original input model, an application receives device-independent input in the form of messages that are sent or posted to its windows, such as WM_CHAR, WM_MOUSEMOVE, and WM_APPCOMMAND. In contrast, for raw input an application must register the devices it wants to get data from. Also, the application gets the raw input through the WM_INPUT message.

There are several advantages to the raw input model:

An application does not have to detect or open the input device.

An application gets the data directly from the device, and processes the data for its needs.

An application can distinguish the source of the input even if it is from the same type of device. For example, two mouse devices.

An application manages the data traffic by specifying data from a collection of devices or only specific device types.

HID devices can be used as they become available in the marketplace, without waiting for new message types or an updated OS to have new commands in WM_APPCOMMAND.

finally,I saw this message in the Wacom document : 6.2.5.   WT_PROXIMITY Description The WT_PROXIMITY message is posted to the owning window and any manager windows when the cursor enters or leaves context prox­imity.   Parameter Description   wParam Contains the handle of the context that the cursor is entering or leav­ing.   lParam The low-order word is non-zero when the cursor is entering the context and zero when it is leaving the context. The high-order word is non-zero when the cursor is leaving or entering hard­ware proximity.

Comments Proximity events are handled separately from regular tablet events. Applications will receive proximity messages even if they haven't requested event messages.

it seem that this message will be send to all manager window even it is not focus.Good Luck.

Answer 2

http://www.wacomeng.com/windows/

wacom have its own API for developer to use