Ask Slashdot: Digital Pens On Linux? 74
New submitter Gonzalez_S writes "There are many digital pens out there, but none of them seem to work on Linux; unless you combine them with a tablet. I have contacted many vendors (Lifetrons, Dane-Elec, ApenUSA, IntelliPen..) and only Intellipen responded that there is very limited support for Linux. Do any of you know of a digital pen that works fine using Linux on normal paper? Some options to explore: can the pen work in real time on my PC screen? Can it function as a mouse? Can the pen work offline? Do I need a tablet (preferably not)? I would be happy if anyone shares a success story here, as they seem a great tool."
Pen's (Score:2, Insightful)
Resist...
To make...
Easy joke...
I have an analogue pen with ink. It can write 0010010010110100101110101 without a problem...
Sorry, it was to easy, couldn't resist...
Re:Pen's (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Pen's (Score:1)
Re:Pen's (Score:0)
Fortunately his tablet has a touch screen.
That ink in sig (Score:1)
NEVER let him live that down (Score:3)
The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth ... and kill!
Re:NEVER let him live that down (Score:3)
Proof onsh again that everything is funniar when read aloud in a bad sean connery ocksent.
Re:Pen's (Score:0)
Its truly sad the kids today.
They need a pen to write 32 bit binary. :P
Re:Pen's (Score:-1)
Whatever retard. I didn't come here to hear your lame jokes.
Re:Pen's (Score:0)
My pen's brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like,
It's bigger than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours...
Re:Pen's (Score:0)
My sharpie works fine on linux monitors (Score:0)
Wacom Inkling (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0, Redundant)
system requirements for inkling
Windows 7, Vista or XP (SP3, 32 or 64 bit versions),
Mac OS 10.5+ (and Intel Processor)
I didn't spend very long looking either
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:5, Informative)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxwacom/forums/forum/236871/topic/4686734 [sourceforge.net]
The Wacom Inkling shows up as a drive with WPI files on it. It should work just fine in Linux since the heavy lifting is all done on the pen. And I didn't spend very long looking either.
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0)
On all sides' defense, Wacom's English website is extremely difficult to navigate. It comes off as one of those scheezy foreign companies with almost zero US relations and marketing. I was investingating making a touch-sensitive tablet purchase from them a couple months ago. From what I could find, the people who used the products regularly were very happy with them, but it was usually via a partner company who bundled Wacom tech with their PC/tablet. In the end my apprehensions caused me to knock the purchase down a few rows on my "things that I want, but totally do not need" list.
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:3)
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0)
The main userbase of Wacom's products are actually graphics artists. If you hang out and talk with any of them, they will tell you that they are very good.
how are the pens?
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0)
I'm not saying Wacom only puts out overpriced crap (the higher end Cintiqs are overpriced, but have no comparable competitors), just that lack of competition means Wacom makes incremental advances, at best, and lets them overcharge for them.
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0)
digging a bit deeper it appears that WPI is in part based on EPI and EPI readers can interpret WPI data files(or the other way around)
http://forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8561
There is also someone who created a Java library for WPI but does not seem to have released it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cy5Kwyu6x4lcOodp8ydHamLxryGHXOopZv_gkSRx-8I/edit?pli=1
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:3, Insightful)
> I didn't spend very long looking either
That is why you fail.
It's hard to find a working solution when you aren't really trying and you are only out to make a troll point.
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0)
system requirements not mentioning linux mean nothing! troll or moron?
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0, Troll)
Most of the time device manufactures will not say it will work for Linux.
If they did it will probably not be too profitable for them.
1. Linux usage is around 2%. Spread across many distributions, hardware support is often hit or miss across them. so you need a technical support staff to solve a lot of tougher questions. A lot of money, for little gain.
2. They probably unwilling or unable to make their drivers Open Source. And if it ain't open source you could be in GPL violation. Just leave Linux out and you are legally safer.
3. Linux is not a Desktop OS, it is a server OS. For a server you don't need pens.
4. Open source project is probably working on it. I am not going to bother to Google or read further down in the posts for a link. But for the most part there is an open source project for a lot of hardware to support it in one way or an other.
5. Linux Desktop Users for the most part hate new technology.
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0)
1. Oh, they could easily say that it works on linux and tell people that they're not offering technical support for it. Problem solved.
2. There is hardware where the linux drivers are closed-source afaik. i'm not sure why this is a GPL violation. also you're probably legally safer if you only use linux and ditch ms and apple.
3. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
4. Only thing you're right about. http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxwacom/forums/forum/236871/topic/4686734
5. >. Just because linux actually works on older hardware, doesn't mean linux users hate new technology. why throw old stuff out when you can make it usefull again by installing linux.
Why exactly do you hate linux users?
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:0)
3. Linux is not a Desktop OS, it is a server OS. For a server you don't need pens.
Tell that to the people with a TiVO, Roku, or Android phone. Works pretty well for them.
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:2)
5. Linux Desktop Users for the most part hate new technology.
Not unjustifiably so. The older generation Wacom stuff worked beautifully. Wear it out, go buy the most similar thing still available for sale, download an experimental driver, upgrade your entire operating system, replace half the packages on your operating system with other packages from a PPA to get the driver to work, and then your new thing you paid big money for mostly half works. Older hardware is a much safer bet on Linux. It takes drivers a long time to catch up whenever there's some new product line instead of a minor evolution of the old product line.
Re:Wacom Inkling (Score:2)
May be this can answer your question ? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know so much about digital pen or digipen on linux, but you can get some info in here:
http://linuxwacom.sourceforge.net/index_old.php
Non-existent beast (Score:2)
Re:Non-existent beast (Score:4, Informative)
The linux Wacom driver project is maintained by a Wacom employee and has positive feedback
Re:Non-existent beast (Score:1)
When the OP says he doesn't want a tablet, does he mean he doesn't want a device like an iPad etc, or is he saying he doesn't want a graphics tablet? If the latter, isn't the Wacom project primarily for use of Wacom graphics tablets?
Re:Non-existent beast (Score:5, Interesting)
In standard Slashdot fashion, I'm going to suggest something that ISN'T what the author requested, but it is something I found very useful.
In our office, we have an HP digital 'sender'. It is little more than a glorified sheet feed scanner, but it is VERY useful for me. I take a lot of handwritten notes in meetings, and I'm never using the same notepad or pen. The result is that while I'd love to automatically digitize my notes on the fly, there would be many times in which I would forget the digital pen and be stuck with 2-3 sheets of paper that required extra effort to digitize (if it was possible).
Relying on the scanner station is actually VERY simple. I just grab my notes, drop them into the sheet feeder, and press the button (preset for me). in about 2s/page, the machine scans my notes, converts it to a PDF, and either emails it to me or stores in my LAN receiving folder. I'm not sure if the station can do OCR on the fly (I'm sure some do), but a simple script can kick off an OCR job whenever a file is received from the document scanner.
The entire process can be unattended, and for me, I just grab my notes and drop them right into the shredder. (It took me about a month of notes before I trusted the machine not to mess up).
However, it works pretty well once you get it going. My notes get stored as a PDF, and I don't have to worry about compatability with a pen/tablet or batteries, or losing the pen, or buying special paper.
It's not a perfect solution, but I've found it very useful, and if you don't find a compatible digitizing pen, this might be a fallback option, albeit a non-portable option.
Re:Non-existent beast (Score:2)
There are also whiteboards that automatically scan and optionally print copies of what is on the whiteboard. Everyone gets consistent, persistent notes.
I don't know if there's a generic name, but Panaboard [panasonic.net] is the brand I've used.
It's nice to have proof of what was and wasn't mentioned during meetings.
Re:Non-existent beast (Score:1)
Re:Non-existent beast (Score:2)
Nip over the border and get a Mangalica. 3 out of 4 ain't bad.
It's all about pens. (Score:4, Funny)
What is it with Slashdot and pens today?
Re:It's all about pens. (Score:0)
Friday is "Fountain Pen Day." That could have something to do with it.
Good excuse to buy something...
Re:It's all about pens. (Score:1)
Detachable pens.
Re:It's all about pens. (Score:0)
Re:It's all about pens. (Score:0)
King Missile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byDiILrNbM4
Pens? Tablets dont work right (Score:0)
I have a medium Wacom Intuos 5 tablet. There's no way in linux to disable the multi-touch feature, and just use the pen. Casually touching it with any part of my hand ends up clicking buttons, switching windows, etc. It makes it virtually unusable. I also can't map any of the buttons, or scroll wheel, and it wont recognize the eraser end of the pen when I flip it over.
Same results with a cheaper little Bamboo capture tablet.
Not that it matters, there are no software packages under linux to make any good use of it. Gimp and Blender are too slow and unresponsive to make it worth the effort.
Re:Pens? Tablets dont work right (Score:2)
Not really following the command-line paradigm (Score:3, Funny)
I fail to see how a "digital pen" is useful to enter commands in a bash prompt, or how it could really help you edit your apache config files or smb.conf.
Now a VT220, I can see plenty of use for that, as well as a line printer, to print log files as such. You should get that stuff instead.
Re:Not really following the command-line paradigm (Score:1)
The VT220 was an awesome terminal. It was *the* interface for the visionary DoD electronic health record system (CHCS) for decades. While it did take about three years to learn, it was wicked fast and you could be very efficient.
Along comes AHLTA, a Windows (VisualBasic client, none the less) GUI and suddenly things crawled to a standstill. Docs are leaving the military to get away from it. While CHCS was "ugly" and seemed ancient ("DOS" is what people said, even if it was really VMX/MUMPS--character interface is what they mean) it made people safer and more productive.
It is all in the eyes of the beholder.
Oh, and who ever said that Linux wasn't for desktops has their head stuck up their C:> prompt.
Re:Not really following the command-line paradigm (Score:2)
Well, you simply haven't watched enough Hollywood movies then.
It is a tool (Score:0)
Re:It is a tool (Score:-1)
But that would make sense. You fail to grasp that he's entitled to having his niche desktop OS supported.
Re:It is a tool (Score:3)
I think his asking is about finding out if there is a tool for Linux in this range. I'm sure he knows he will be stuck with windows or OSX if he can't find one.
Lets look at it another way. I always wanted a trip meter for my car that gave miles driven, fuel usage, RMP and several other pieces of information like Average MPG, Idle time and so on. I had this in a truck I owned in the late 1990s and understand they are common in newer cars. My alternative is to buy a new car if I went with only getting what works. On the other hand, I can buy something very similar that plugs into the car and gives me everything I need. There are several offerings for after market trip computers and you have the added benefit of on board diagnostics readings if the check engine light ever comes on. This is really the same as looking for a digital pen that will work in a specific environment instead of changing the environment altogether.
What you need, sir, is Pen15. (Score:-1, Troll)
Pen15 fits easy in the hand, interfaces well with both sides, and works well digitally.
You might not want to whip it out at the local coffee shop though.
(time to burn through all that excess karma I guess...)
Re:What you need, sir, is Pen15. (Score:-1)
I did that in a coffee shop in San Fransisco. I didn't realize I was such a popular guy.
digital pens (Score:2)
So, here's my story:
There was once I installed Ubuntu 8.10 on an Acer tablet laptop with a wacom digital pen. In order to make the digital pen work (fully functional, e.g. with the ability to detect pen tip force), I installed a driver provided by the Linux Wacom Project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxwacom/). It seemed to work very well. Although one can use it as a mouse, it provided a much higher resolution. In addition, it was pressure sensitive. It can detect the force applied on the pen tip. This can be verified by using a painting software such as Gimp. One can use a brush and see the stroke width variations after enabling the pressure-sensitivity option in the configuration.
The same driver works for tablets as well. I have a wacom tablet pad which uses a USB cable to connect my computer running Ubuntu. I have been using it to collect digital ink data. It worked fine.
If you are looking for a digital pen with which you can write on real papers, you may want to take a look at Digimemo (http://www.digimemo.com/). I had seen it worked on Linux by using some open source third party software. The software doesn't come with the product, but only for offline use. You can load the data into Journal and some tools. The format is very simple, so it is easy to write your own transformer code.
I hope this will help you.
Re:digital pens (Score:1)
wacom pen partner II (Score:0)
a small decade ago, i bought a wacom pen partner II, as a replacement for my mouse; it's a small tablet with a pen (two buttons, and the tip can be pressed).
it worked out-of-the-box on openbsd, and i know it works out-of-the-box on a 2.6 linux kernel. it came with windows software to finetune some things (completely unneeded, it worked very well) and to put the tablet in either "relative" or "absolute" mode.
it just attaches as a regular uhid, and sends simple things like coordinates and button-presses. just like the very old wacom tablets, which had a serial cable.
LiveScribe (Score:2)
LiveScribe has the best pen, but you need to use a Windows VM through VirtualBox to make it work.
LiveScribe uses Anoto paper. This is because the pen has a difficult time determining where exactly it is on a big, white sheet of paper. Think like being a sailor on the ocean with a star-free sky, no sun, no landmarks, no compass. You're fucked. The pen uses the dot pattern on Anoto paper to position itself on the sheet, to determine what page it's on, what book it's in, everything. The pattern is unique; the pen has a database of patterns it can reference to find the positional information based on the pattern it's given (effectively a 2D hash table).
On the flip side, LiveScribe pens are really crappy pens. The journal is the nicest journal you'll ever get; the pen is a crappy pen, not even a gel pen, and it'll wear out in 50 pages (at 2 cents per page, given pen cartridge prices).
Re:LiveScribe (Score:2)
LiveScribe has the best pen, but you need to use a Windows VM through VirtualBox to make it work.
There is also LibreScribe and smartpen-browser. Last time I ran either of these, they were still missing a lot of features.
Re:LiveScribe (Score:1)
LiveScribe has the best pen, but you need to use a Windows VM through VirtualBox to make it work.
https://github.com/aliendude5300/LibreScribe/wiki [github.com] https://masterbranch.com/librescribe-project/1186535 [masterbranch.com]
Re:LiveScribe (Score:1)
A REALLY cheap one, with linux support (Score:4, Informative)
I have a CHEAP digital pen (cost me 25$) called the "greenpoint mobile notetaker" (which i think is a pegasus notetaker rebadged).... its ultra simple. it works under linux and what the linux software gives you is a simple svg map of what you drew on a piece of paper. Its just a normal pen with a little tracking unit that somehow tracks everything you write... I dont use it too much, but the times i have its not failed me so far.
http://scratchpost.dreamhosters.com/software/Pegasus_Notetaker/ [dreamhosters.com] will pull svg's from the pens tracking device thing
but it looks very much like this http://www.gadgetvictims.com/2009/12/digital-note-taker-pen.html [gadgetvictims.com]
I find it works ok, but i've not really used any other digital pens, so i have no point of comparison - but at 25$ (which was on sale at the time) i just went "sure why not" and later found out it supported linux (which was a nice surprise).
I had previously looked at things like livescribe and went "no linux support, wont bother". There are one or two i can see on aliexpress http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-USB-Digital-Pen-Digital-Mobile-Note-Taker-Digital-Handwriting-Capture-Device/519494331.html [aliexpress.com] but i dont know if they're based on the same thing (and they're twice the price i paid) and hence will still support linux
Re:A REALLY cheap one, with linux support (Score:1)
Oh, two other things (and i would test it if i could, but my better half has stolen it). It doesnt require special paper and im pretty sure when the tracking device is plugged in it comes up as a mouse and operates as such (in relative mode)... but dont quote me on that.
Re:A REALLY cheap one, with linux support (Score:1)
Good work around. (Score:1)
For $25, worth a shot (Score:1)
Re:For $25, worth a shot (Score:1)
Re:For $25, worth a shot (Score:1)
Re:For $25, worth a shot (Score:1)
Re:For $25, worth a shot (Score:1)
Re:For $25, worth a shot (Score:0)
Well... I got the Dane-Elec a couple of days ago. Afraid it's worth about what I paid for it. I had to replace the receiver's battery (aaa nimh) first before I could get it to work, and I've yet to get it to recognize the pen, although it works fine as a flash drive.
The Yi Fang is much nicer to work with. Just plug it in to charge it, then unplug, clip to your paper, and get writing. The gpl m210 software (launchpad.net/m210, also a debian package) grabs x-y coordinates from the pen, then tosses them into a c data structure and saves it to disk. You then run a separate command to output svg files (one per page of notes). Since svg is just an xml dialect, the conversion program doesn't need any special graphics libraries; it just outputs a text file.
As for using the pen as a mouse, I just plugged it in. It shows up as a regular usb human interface device, and works just like a mouse. Push down on the tip to click, and push the side button to get a right-click.
That's as far as I've gotten thus far. My ocr attempts haven't been all that great, but I'm still working on it.
!digitalpenis (Score:2)
I had the same question a few weeks ago (Score:2)
Re:I had the same question a few weeks ago (Score:1)
Re:I had the same question a few weeks ago (Score:1)
Re:I had the same question a few weeks ago (Score:1)
Re:I had the same question a few weeks ago (Score:1)
Linux drivers for Pegasus Technologies digital pen (Score:0)
Information and open source linux drivers are available for the M210 Mobile NoteTaker. I will soon be publishing
information and an open source linux driver for the older P230 NoteTaker.
Pegasus Technologies provides information about how to talk to their Mobile NoteTaker
digital pen and how pen strokes are stored in the memory of the device. You must know
how to communicate with an USB device (a HID type USB device in particular).
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1pIwZDZerka2sFQnuTf4v1jNNCjkxoRXlhiZdUSO796o
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1VBkd7T8r9n_3tWHgtEI2b0GTb-TNsiYZPIVuXz9AK3A
Pegasus Technologies also provides a SDK for Microsoft Windows.
http://www.pegatech.com/Developers
Pegasus Technology web sites
http://www.pegatech.com
http://pegatech.blogspot.ca/
Open Source software projects for Mobile NoteTaker (M210)
Pen-driver http://sourceforge.net/projects/pen-driver/
Pegasus Scribble http://sourceforge.net/projects/pegasusscribble/
M210 Office http://sourceforge.net/projects/m210office/
pegtool http://code.google.com/p/pegtool/
OpenMNT http://openmnt.sourceforge.net/
m210 Tools https://launchpad.net/m210
m210 http://tjjr.fi/sw/m210/
(I am missing a few more websites which I post in a later note)
My older IOGear Digital Scribe (model P230 NoteTaker) works well and I use it to record my
notes. However it requires a notebook computer and a Windows application to record the
pen strokes. The nice part is that I can use MyScript to convert my handwriting to typed
text.
The drivers and applications that I found for the M210 Mobile NoteTaker do not work for
the older NoteTaker (P230) device that I have. I am testing a rudimentary linux driver I have created
for my P230 NoteTaker digital pen. I hope to add support for the M210 Mobile NoteTaker digital pen. I
hope to publish the completed, fully documented driver soon.