[Gimp-user] How do you use a tablet to draw in GIMP?

[Adam Nielsen <a nielsen shikadi net>]

Hi all,

I have a Wacom tablet I'm trying to get working with GIMP under Linux.  By 
default (before I change anything) the tablet appears like a mouse and I can 
draw on a canvas just like using the mouse.  But this doesn't give me pressure 
control.

I went into Edit | Preferences | Input Devices and clicked Configure, then 
enabled the tablet's stylus device.  Now when I move the pen around on the 
tablet, the mouse cursor still moves around on the screen and selects tools 
like before, but I can't actually draw anything any more.

When I move the mouse over the canvas with the paintbrush tool selected I get 
a small dashed rectangle around the tip of the mouse cursor indicating where 
the ink will go when I click the mouse button, but this dashed rectangle 
disappears when I use the stylus pen, even though I have the paintbrush tool 
selected.  The Device Status dialog does update as I select tools with the 
stylus pen, I just can't make any marks on the canvas.

I am not sure why GIMP doesn't seem to notice I am trying to draw with the 
tablet pen.  In the Configure Extended Input Devices screen there is a tab for 
Keys which I thought maybe I had to do something with, but it only seems to 
let me type in keyboard keys into those fields and the GIMP documentation 
skips over it completely so I don't really have any idea what it's for.

How do you tell GIMP to draw, using pressure, when the stylus pen is touching 
the tablet surface?

Thanks,
Adam.