More Pen Colors!

[Jay]

Again, more note taking colors for students would be great. Half of my
classmates have 16, 24, or even 64 pen packs to take notes. I on the other
hand, with my cool tablet and OneNote, am limited to a mere 8 different
colors (if I want to keep my 4 highlighters) and I can't even customize what
the 8 are - I have to choose from a few that are someone else's picks. I'm
convinced that tablets and OneNote will be huge one day with students, but
only if it does more than paper alone. Add unlimited pens with unlimited
color choices, please!

 

[Chris_Pratley \(MS\)]

If you have installed Sp1, then you can customize the pen colors, thickness,
and name (at the bottom of the pen list is a command to customize the
current pen). You still only have 8 different pens, but you control what
they are.

I'm interested to hear what scenario you have that requires more than 8
types of pens at one session. We though 8 would be enough for most people,
given that you can customize.

Chris (MS)

 

[Micah Brodsky]

I find that when drawing complicated diagrams, a multitude of pen colors is
useful. I finally broke down and started replacing (customizing)
infrequently used pens to get more colors when I needed to draw a
cross-section of a CMOS inverter. Too many different doped areas and layers
of polysilicon and metal and oxide means too many different colored regions
to draw!
It's not so much that I need more than 8 colors simultaneously. It's that
it's a pain in the butt to have to customize the pens to get an appropriate
pallette of colors for each new diagram and then have to de-customize them
afterward! It would be much easier to be able to keep around a stash of
colors or just to customize the color on the fly with a color palette.
(Speaking of which, it would also be nice to be able to re-color strokes
after drawing them. Erasing and redrawing is annoying, needless to say.)

--Micah

 

[Chris_Pratley \(MS\)]

OK, thanks for the details. Recoloring woudl be handy, I agree. (you can do
it for handwriting - using the text color button - but not for drawing)

Chris (MS)

 

[Jay]

I'm using all these colors in medical school. I'm always drawing complex
schematic diagrams or annotating images. Whatever the case, I tend to use a
lot of colors to keep everything straight and easy to understand at a glance.
I've customized my toolbar by having all eight colors plus the highlighters
individually in a row on my toolbar so all I have to do is click a color -
takes too much time to use a pulldown menu when I'm in the middle of a
lecture and have to change colors quickly.

The reason that I don't like being constrained to the available 40 colors is
that some don't show up as well as others on my tablet screen - for example,
dark blue and black look the same at most viewing angles - so I'd like the
ability to customize my colors more. Having palette sets would be amazing,
maybe palette 1 with 8 colors, palette 2 with 8 different colors, etc.
Colors that work well on a white background are totally different than those
that work well on a black background (e.g. radiology images).

 

[stern88]

For all interested - This has been submitted as a suggestion in "Connect"
using id 175055 and named "Pens, Highlighters - Colors". If you would like
this idea and would like to vote to see if we can add this functionality -
please login to "connect" and cast your vote ..