Make pen pressure sensitive?

[John Corkery]

I'm using OneNote Beta2 on a desktop computer with a Wacom tablet connected.
When I check "Use pen pressure sensitivity" under Options, it doesn't appear
to have any effect on my pen strokes.

Also, is there any way to make OneNote default to the pen tool when opening
a new Side Note? That's what I would typically want to use, but as it is,
OneNote defaults to the text tool and I have to tap on the pen tool first.

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Aloha John,

I'm not really surprised. Substantial parts of the ink capability in OneNote
are dependant upon the Tablet PC OS which you're not using. The Wacom Tablet
is not really supported for ink and I'd have no expectations regarding what
features of OneNote would or wouldn't work with it.

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr - MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenotefaq.htm

 

[John Corkery]

Thanks for replying, Ben.

I have a Tablet PC also, but I use my desktop PC more often. With a Wacom
Cintiq connected, it sure seems like I should be able to get my desktop PC to
behave like a much bigger, much more powerful version of my convertible
Tablet PC but, sadly, that's simply not the case.

Sketching and jotting down handwritten notes in OneNote on my TPC is a very
pleasant experience, but doing the same on my Cintiq--which is capable of
much greater pressure sensitivity and connected to a much more powerful
computer in every conceivable way--is very clunky in comparison.

So, OneNote can't be made to hook into the Wacom driver--just like every
graphics program does--when it's installed on a desktop computer? Seems like
it shouldn't be difficult to implement.

Regardless, shouldn't that "pressure sensitivity" option in OneNote be
grayed out if selecting it does nothing?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

OneNote can be hooked up if you are running the TabletPC OS edition of
Windows XP on your desktop as well. Or, next year, if you are running
Vista Ultimate on your desktop.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Aloha John,

It's because OneNote really doesn't do a lot of it's own digital ink functionality.
It relies upon the Tablet PC OS for that and since your desktop machine
doesn't have the Tablet PC OS...a lot of the ink functionality just isn't
there.

Maybe they could write OneNote to interface better with the Wacom drivers,
but really that would be a pretty substantial code change and they just don't
have the resources to devote to something that really affects a pretty small
group of users.

Given the choice between a better ink experience for Wacom users or better
search capabilities across notebooks I think we'd all prefer they invest
their resources on the search capabilities.

Also I've heard that Vista should improve the ink support on non-tablet machines,
but I haven't had time to try that scenario yet so I don't know.

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr - MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenotefaq.htm

 

[John Corkery]

Given the choice between a better ink experience for Wacom users or better

search capabilities across notebooks I think we'd all prefer they invest
their resources on the search capabilities.

I don't know why this would need to be an either/or proposition. It seems to
me that a major goal for any software developer would have to be to make an
application as functionally equivalent as possible on all platforms for which
it's been released.

All the elements are there to make OneNote pens pressure sensitive on a
desktop PC, but someone somewhere decided not to put the pieces together. I
doubt that it would take more than a relatively insignificant fraction of
development time to enable the application to hook into an available Wacom
driver when installed on a non-TPC system. (After all, the sensor technology
implemented in most of the TPCs out there is a Wacom product.)

The pressure sensitivity in Sketchbook Pro and ArtRage--programs originally
developed specifically for the Tablet PC--works equally well on a TPC or
desktop. These are comparatively tiny apps at 4.51 MB and 1.81 MB
respectively and were developed by comparatively tiny companies, especially
Ambient Design.

The computer graphics industry just keeps getting bigger and bigger and I've
noticed that TPCs are establishing more of a presence within it. Rightly so.
Tablet PCs are a perfect portable solution for digital artists. Most
professional digital artists have Wacom tablets attached to their desktop
computers. I think it would be wise for Microsoft to start paying more
attention this sector, because it's only going to grow exponentially larger.

Although Vista may natively support pressure sensitivity when it's released,
most businesses and individuals who have spent a significant amount of time
establishing a specific workflow involving a number of applications, add-ons,
plug-ins, hardware accessories, etc. are reluctant to embrace a new OS until
they're confident that all of their workflow components are going to operate
glitch-free within it. It seems quite backward to tell a customer to upgrade
an entire OS just to enable pressure sensitivity in one particular
application when plenty of other apps already provide that feature by
utilizing a driver that's literally a standard in the computing world.

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Aloha John,

I don't know why this would need to be an either/or proposition.

Because there are a finite number of resources and they can't just snap their
fingers and make every possible feature happen. They have to prioritize
and pick and choose what they are and are not going to do. That's a big
part of why OneNote 2007 doesn't have the new ribbon UI that the rest of
the Office family has.

Under the circumstances I'm quite pleased with what they've chosen to focus
their efforts on for this version of the product. Internal hyperlinks, far
better table support, excellent shared notebook support, better navigation
UI, a usable OneNote mobile with two-way sync...all of those features are
more important than pressure sensitivity for the relatively few Wacom users,
in my opinion.

It
seems to me that a major goal for any software developer would have to
be to make an application as functionally equivalent as possible on
all platforms for which it's been released.

OneNote has not been released for the Wacom Tablet. Should they also build
in ink support for the Intuos, the Adesso Personal Pen, the Logitech Pen,
the WOWPen...?

They simply can't create custom ink support for every possible device. Not
unless they want to dedicate an entire team of programmers, which they don't
have, to do it. And once again, most of the digital ink support in OneNote
is provided by the Tablet OS not by OneNote itself.

All the elements are there to make OneNote pens pressure sensitive on
a desktop PC, but someone somewhere decided not to put the pieces
together. I doubt that it would take more than a relatively
insignificant fraction of development time to enable the application
to hook into an available Wacom driver when installed on a non-TPC
system.

Well, then why don't you do it?

artists. Most professional digital artists have Wacom tablets attached
to their desktop computers. I think it would be wise for Microsoft to
start paying more attention this sector, because it's only going to
grow exponentially larger.

I'm sure your suggestion is duly noted. By the next version of OneNote,
however, we'll be well into the Vista era and the OneNote team will have
to decide if they're willing to spend the resources to support ink on this
wide range of relatively unusual devices.

"You can't always get what you want."
-Mick Jagger-

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr - MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenotefaq.htm

 

[John Corkery]

OneNote has not been released for the Wacom Tablet. Should they also build

in ink support for the Intuos, the Adesso Personal Pen, the Logitech Pen,
the WOWPen...?

Come on, now. It's not like I'm expecting Linux support here. The Wacom
tablet is not a "platform" (i.e. an OS). It's the most widely used tablet in
the industry, by far. It is, quite literally, an industry standard and has
been for at least a decade. In fact, I would argue that Wacom's presence has
done a great deal to fuel the development of Tablet PCs. (And the Intuos is
one of Wacom's best tablets, BTW. The Wacom driver works with all of its
tablets.)

I have a few questions for you...

OneNote has been developed around this whole "notebook" metaphor, right?
That being the case, the ability to doodle, sketch and make handwritten
notes--just like anyone might do in a real notebook--is one of its major
features, right?

On the Tablet PC version of XP, this feature works beautifully. But OneNote
isn't exclusive to the TPC, it's also available for regular old desktop PCs,
correct? Therefore, anyone having a tablet connected to their PC (and, again,
Wacom is the giant in this market) might find this major feature quite
attractive, don't you think? Also, isn't it a very real possibility that
users who enjoy inking on their TPCs might be prompted to actually purchase a
tablet so they can do the same on their desktop PCs?

Maybe it's just my wild and crazy logic at play here but, to me, it seems
like a no-brainer to make sure that your applications perform consistently
across all platforms. If your app revolves around a notebook metaphor, make
sure the features that allow it behave like a notebook work properly under
every OS for which you're making it available. It makes absolutely no sense
that the "Tablet" component of the "Tablet PC" is such a big focus in OneNote
yet, for some reason, it's considered to be a trivial feature and mostly
discarded for PCs with tablets.

I'm getting a sense that, no matter what I say, you're going to disagree
with me, so I'm going to stop here. But, if there's one thing I can get you
to agree with me on (albeit begrudgingly, no doubt), maybe it's this:

Don't you think it might be a good idea to have the "pressure sensitive"
option grayed out when OneNote is installed on a desktop PC, or is this also
too much to ask for, given the development team's finite number of resources
and their all-consuming focus on the app's fabulous search capabilities?

 

[John Corkery]

One last thing...

You consider Wacom tablets to be "relatively unusual" devices. However, I'd
be willing to bet that there are a lot more PCs out there that have Wacom
tablets connected to them than there are actual Tablet PCs. Therefore, Tablet
PCs are most likely more "unusual" devices than Wacom tablets.

 

[John Corkery]

OK, so I lied about wrapping it up here. I'm back, but only to say this:

Getting pressure sensitivity to work on a desktop PC is absolutely NOT
something that requires an entirely new, custom inking system as you seem to
insist. Just as ON currently reads pressure data supplied by the Tablet PC's
native tablet driver as interpreted from the sensor built into the screen
(again, a Wacom product on almost all of the TPCs out there), it could also
be made to read the pressure data supplied by a Wacom driver on a desktop PC.
No, it wouldn't be "snap your fingers" easy, (then again nothing ever is, is
it?) but certainly not something that would stunt the app's development in
every other area.

Besides, programmers are quite specialized. A person working on something
like a search engine would certainly not be diverted to a project outside his
area of expertise, like an ink-related feature. So, this argument about
whether we'd all prefer the ON team focusing on the app's search capabilities
or something else is extremely faulty.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

The Microsoft explanation is rather simple. All the basic tablet
functionality is part of Windows, not Office. Hence OneNote needs a
Windows version that provides this tablet functionality. There are only
two versions of Windows that offer it: Windows XP TabletPC and Vista
Ultimate.
Microsoft is determined to have system-level type functionality in
Windows and not in Office. So tablet-like functionality is in Windows.
In Office 2007, they even took this a step further. Voice recognition
(first introduced in Office) has been stripped out of 2007 and moved to
Windows. The same thing happened with the scanning & camera feature that
used to be built into Office (curiously, OneNote 2007 actually received
that feature while Word, Excel and PPT lost it). For a lot of these
features that were moved to Windows, the MS answer is that Vista has
them. The story of their availability on XP is rather bleak though.
Voice recognition e.g. is built only into the XP TabletPC edition. I
know that there have been some attempts by users to try to get it
working on a normal XP system as well, but it hasn't been really
successful yet in terms of using it with Office (the experimenting is
still going on).
So yeah, Windows XP users that don't have a tabletpc edition seem to be
left in the rain quite a bit with Office 2007. Microsoft's default
answer is that Vista Ultimate will address all these issues.
If you want to use your Wacom tablet to the fullest, you'll need to
install Windows XP TabletPC edition or Vista Ultimate. These are
unfortunately your only two options.

Patrick Schmid

 

[John Corkery]

Thanks, Patrick, your explanation was very helpful.

It makes a lot more sense that the Vista dev team would be responsible for
providing an interface with the Wacom driver rather than the ON team and that
their complete focus would be on the brand new OS, rather than compatibility
issues with XP.

For reasons I mentioned previously, I'd be very hesitant to make the switch
to Vista right away, but installing the TPC OS seems like a viable stop-gap.
Can you point me to any websites that might provide me with more information
on doing this? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi John,

I would be very hesitant of making the switch to Vista as well right
away (especially of course while it is still in beta).
I looked around a bit for the tabletpc edition. From what I could find,
the thing that will probably stop you from installing it on your desktop
is licensing (news to me btw as well). All I could find indicates that a
TabletPC license can only be acquired via the purchase of a TabletPC
from an OEM. I saw that the media for it though is provided to volume
license customers. I don't have an MSDN subscription myself, but it
could be possible that you can find it in there (incl. maybe a license
to use it). You might want to ask about this issue in the
Microsoft.public.windows.tabletpc newsgroup.

Sorry that I didn't know about the licensing issue.

Patrick Schmid

 

[John Corkery]

I'll check it out. Thanks for your help!

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Aloha John,

Ah, it was helpful when he said it but not when I said it?

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr - MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenotefaq.htm

 

[Patrick Schmid]

LOL.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Jeff Gough]

I'm using OneNote Beta2 on a desktop computer with a Wacom tablet connected.
When I check "Use pen pressure sensitivity" under Options, it doesn't appear
to have any effect on my pen strokes.

Also, is there any way to make OneNote default to the pen tool when opening
a new Side Note? That's what I would typically want to use, but as it is,
OneNote defaults to the text tool and I have to tap on the pen tool first.

 

[Jeff Gough]

I have a tablet PC with XP Tablet, and still the pressure sensitivity doesn't
work, when it does in, say, Journal.

Also, one cannot have a chisel tipped pen.

This is most irritating, as my notes now look rather childish compared to
the nice fountain pen look I'm used to.

Hopefully this will be sorted later.

I don't hold out much hope.