TabletMagic Serial Wacom Driver

TabletMagic is an open-source donationware driver enabling Wacom Serial tablets (UD, SD, PL, CT, KT, GD) in Mac OS X. Requires Mac OS X 10.2 or higher and a compatible serial adapter. (For information regarding Wacom ADB tablets go here.)

How Does It Work?

Mac OS X has built-in support for serial ports. So if you want a serial device to work in Mac OS X all you need is a serial port or USB-serial adapter and a driver program (e.g., TabletMagic) to translate the device's cryptic chatter into coherent system events.

The driver part of TabletMagic is a small and efficient "daemon" program named "TabletMagicDaemon" that talks to the tablet and does most of the real work.

TabletMagicDaemon generates system-level "Tablet Events" that provide pressure, tilt, and eraser information for programs to use. Any application that responds to Mac OS X tablet events will work with TabletMagic! * Corel Painter 9, for example, understands these events, while Corel Painter 8 does not.

You can use TabletMagic's Preference Pane interface to start and stop the driver, and to configure and test your tablet.

The History of TabletMagic

tabletmagic icon

When Wacom dropped support for serial tablets in Mac OS X it was a bitter disappointment. I love my ArtZ-II tablet and it was terribly sad to see it just sitting there collecting dust. So in early 2001 I donned my propeller beanie and started to work on the problem.

I downloaded the PDFs and code samples at Wacom's web site. With their help I was quickly able to write a program that spoke fluent Wacom, but it was only a prototype and not a driver.

Fast forward to April 2004. After three years of neglect I decided to make a true driver and go open source. TabletMagic 1.0 was ugly but it worked.

In May 2006 I locked myself in a room with a Cocoa programming book and replaced the rusty configurator with a shiny preference pane. This was released as TabletMagic 2.0.

TabletMagic on TabletPC

Due to overwhelming demand in 2009 I added support for Wacom serial digitizers found in several popular TabletPC systems. Visit the TabletMagic for TabletPC page for more details.