Very basic setup recently fails me

[udippel]

MyPaint version: 1.2.0 (Kubuntu) 18.04
lenovo Helix 2

My excuses for asking about a very simple item. I am an engineering lecturer at university level, and used to use very old versions of mypaint, I think from as far as 2005 or so. I am NOT an artist by any means.
But I really, really loved a specific setup of mypaint: fullscreen (to be beamed into the lecture hall), some 5 colours to be selected using ‘X’, and the (only) button of the pen being used for shifting the drawing around on the canvas. Fantastic for my purposes! (Sorry to the artists, and to everyone who put so many more things into the program during the years.)
With kubuntu 18.04 / 1.2.0 somehow this setup fails to work, because the ability to press the button for moving on the canvas doesn’t work any longer. To be more precise: starting a new drawing, I can make it work, but after some strokes, when pressing the button, nothing happens any longer. Then I can only move with the cursor keys in quite considerable orthogonal jumps.

It this a bug, or do I miss any relevant setting, to instruct the button of the pen to ‘move’ the currently displayed area?

Are there any Errors Popping Up? No.

Thanks in advance for any help,

Uwe

[jpll]

To change the button used for panning:

Press the Edit menu and select Edit Preferences.
Go the Buttons tab.
Double click the Action called Pan View and then press the button on your stylus (pen).

However, since you got it to work initially, it sounds like it could be an old event handling bug. I would suggest trying the appimage for v2.0.1 instead of your current version: https://github.com/mypaint/mypaint/releases/download/v2.0.1/MyPaint-v2.0.1.AppImage

Make the binary executable (chmod +x filename) and the first thing you should do when running it is to change Default Compatibility Mode to 1.x in the Compatibility tab in the preferences (rightmost tab, you may have to resize the window or press the arrows in the top bar). This is for performance reasons, since you won’t need the new color blending stuff for your use case.

[udippel]

Thanks a lot! As of now it works as it did before, when I was, I think, on some version 0.x.
I keep using it, and report back only in case of further problems.

Thanks again,

Uwe

[udippel]

Alas, no it doesn’t.

It does the very first moments, but then it fails. Now I am back on my second PC (convertible), and here it works, using physically the same pen.
I’d be glad to do a vokoscreen to show how fantastic this works on ubuntu 18.04, mypaint 1.2.0+gitexport.f62444e
Whenever clicking the button of the pen, the whole drawing moves on the canvas, like I remembered it would have done. With or without compatibility, it doesn’t on version 2.01, reliably.

Would you actually, like to see it?

Kind regards,

Uwe

[udippel]

And now I’m totally happy: on Ubuntu 18.04, the upper part of the pen works flawlessly as eraser, again, like what it used to before. On Ubuntu 20.04, I always had to ‘E’ and draw.

Since I have been using mypaint for years, it comes back naturally. Why is the more recent version so much different; and - to me - so much worse and so difficult to handle?

[jpll]

It’s very hard to answer that without knowing what it is that you find difficult. It could be down to drivers or various libraries, as well as the slowdown of the default mode in 2.0.0. Did you do the compatibility mode change I suggested previously?

[udippel]

Thanks, and sorry for not answering. Yes, I had set the compatibility mode.
The seemingly contradictory item(s) in my posts result from me using two physically different machines. On one Mypaint seems to work well, on the other not so well. I’ll keep investigating, and reporting as good as possible.

Thanks again!