Ask Slashdot: Digital Pens On Linux?

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."

Comments

Pen's

[Razgorov Prikazka]

Must...
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

[TeknoHog]

The penis, mightier than the sword.

Re:Pen's

[vikingpower]

Hm. Your penis might be able to work on the screen. Yet.... using it as a mouse ? I am bit skeptical there.

Re:Pen's

[Anonymous Coward]

Its truly sad the kids today.

They need a pen to write 32 bit binary. :P

Re:Pen's

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately his tablet has a touch screen.

Re:Pen's

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that means you are gay?

My sharpie works fine on linux monitors

[Anonymous Coward]

but I recommend a dry erase marker.

Wacom Inkling

[nightgeometry]

The Wacom Inkling should work fine, I think - it just dumps out vector files.

Re:Wacom Inkling

[eric2hill]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxwacom/forums/forum/236871/topic/4686734

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

[jedidiah]

> 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

[Anonymous Coward]

system requirements not mentioning linux mean nothing! troll or moron?

Re:Wacom Inkling

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Fallen Kell]

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.

Re:Wacom Inkling

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[huruixd]

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:Wacom Inkling

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

But most of that comes from Wacom being THE brand, and not from the merits of their products. It's not hard to find a tablet that's cheaper than Wacom's Bamboo (low-end) offerings, with specs that are comparable to their Intuos line. The biggest downside is the pen requiring a battery.
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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Spugglefink]

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.

May be this can answer your question ?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[vikingpower]

Here in Austria there is a saying: "You are looking for a woolly egg-laying milk sow". You actually might be.

Re:Non-existent beast

[Anonymous Coward]

The linux Wacom driver project is maintained by a Wacom employee and has positive feedback

Re:Non-existent beast

[IndustrialComplex]

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

[Hognoxious]

Nip over the border and get a Mangalica. 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

Re:Non-existent beast

[kumanopuusan]

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 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

[dandelionblue]

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

[Gonzalez_S]

Yes, i agree partially as i am already using this solution from time to time, just using a scanner voor my notes (without a good OCR available unfortunately) The added value of having a digital pen would be to make screencast while using the pen. Maybe i should have added this in the post.

That ink in sig

[Anonymous Coward]

i listened to your song. It's corny.

It's all about pens.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with Slashdot and pens today?

Re:It's all about pens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Friday is "Fountain Pen Day." That could have something to do with it.

Good excuse to buy something...

Re:It's all about pens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Detachable pens.

Re:It's all about pens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch ...

Re:It's all about pens.

[Anonymous Coward]

King Missile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byDiILrNbM4

Pens? Tablets dont work right

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not really following the command-line paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[sumdumass]

Well, you simply haven't watched enough Hollywood movies then.

It is a tool

[Anonymous Coward]

You say you want this as a tool. With tools, you generally pick the right one for the job. In this case, your proper tool is probably OSX or Windows. If the job requires good support for a pen, use an OS where it works properly.

Re:It is a tool

[sumdumass]

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.

NEVER let him live that down

[Thud457]

This is made even funnier by the fact that Connery was Zed in Zardoz, which had the catechism :

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

[drinkypoo]

Proof onsh again that everything is funniar when read aloud in a bad sean connery ocksent.

digital pens

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Gonzalez_S]

About digimemo: u are suggesting http://digimemo.com/dp100.htm in combination with http://digimemo.com/l2.htm ? Any idea which open source third party software that is needed then?

wacom pen partner II

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[bluefoxlucid]

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

[CjKing2k]

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

[BigVig209]

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 https://masterbranch.com/librescribe-project/1186535

Re:LiveScribe

[Gonzalez_S]

Looks very promising, tnx for the links

Re:Pens? Tablets dont work right

[chromas]

Disable compositing on your desktop (alt+shift+F12 in KDE) to get decent refresh speed in Gimp and Blender.

A REALLY cheap one, with linux support

[pjr.cc]

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/ 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

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 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

[pjr.cc]

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

[Gonzalez_S]

If it would work like a mouse.., then this would hopefully also answer my question to make screencasts with it.. (math stuff); tnx

Good work around.

[epSos-de]

Try Staedler USB pen that records the real pen on real paper and sends the drawing to the comp. You might be able to run their software in Wine, becasue it looked very easy and simple in the shop. I also claims to run on every Windows version, so you have high chances to get it to work in Wine. http://www.staedtler.com/digital_pen.Staedtler

For $25, worth a shot

[jrmiller]

Just picked one of these up: http://www.amazon.com/Dane-Elec-DA-DP1-01GC5-R-Z-PEN-Wireless-Digital/dp/B0013JHJWE/ref=pd_sim_sbs_e_3 from Amazon Prime for $25. Don't know if it'll actually work under Linux or not, but the description is certainly promising: "This Viewer software runs on virtually all recent operating systems, from Windows 2000 onward, Mac OS and even most versions of Linux." Even if all you get is a flash drive that stores SVG/JPG/GIF/PNG, seems like you could write a udev handler that would recognize the drive, then call a script to scan it for new files and pass them off to an OCR program. Let's see how well this guy works when I get it.

Re:For $25, worth a shot

[Gonzalez_S]

Yes, i also came across this one, but realtime interaction (aka mouse alike) didn't seem possible, i also contacted this vendor, with a negative answer to my requirements (linux, mouse, ..)

Re:For $25, worth a shot

[jrmiller]

Wanted to follow up and let you know where I'm at so far. I ended up ordering the Dane-Elec pen as well as a Yi Fang mobile notetaker from eBay: http://bit.ly/THnwPL. I found the Yi Fang pen by going out to the "Products" page of the Pegasus website: http://www.pegatech.com/?CategoryID=218. I received the Yi Fang (eBay) pen and reader today, and it is indeed a Pegasus Mobile Notetaker under the hood. I used m210, and was able to convert my note sample from the usb reader into an SVG file relatively easily. OCRing it so far hasn't been a huge success, but I'm working on it. I'll post back when I have some more results to share.

Re:For $25, worth a shot

[jrmiller]

And yes, you can use it in "mouse mode" as well.

Re:For $25, worth a shot

[Gonzalez_S]

So both work as a mouse? (Dane-Elec pen as well as a Yi Fang mobile notetaker) How did u convert it to a svg file?

Re:For $25, worth a shot

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[uvajed_ekil]

Good lord, what is my life coming to? I read the title as something about a "digital penis on Linux."

I had the same question a few weeks ago

[kusmin]

and I bought Fujitsu mobile notetaker plus. It does not need any special paper. According to forums/internet, it works with linux and there is a project for exporting notes from the pen to computer: http://m210office.sourceforge.net/. It can be used as a mouse as well (so they say). But I did not have time to test this pen neither with Windows (to check if it works at all) nor with linux (which I use exclusively) Maybe this weekend I'll have some time for it. Maybe later. But definitely before Christmas )).

Re:I had the same question a few weeks ago

[kusmin]

P.S. and it is cheap (I payed 30 euro incl. delivery)

Re:I had the same question a few weeks ago

[Gonzalez_S]

If u test it, plz let the readers (or just me) know if it worked and possible how u setted it up. tnx

Re:I had the same question a few weeks ago

[kusmin]

well, I tested a bit. uploading of notes to pc does not work either in Windows Vista or linux (slackware 13.37-64 bit). in connected mode, on Windows, the pen works both as a mouse and as a note taker. I will do some more testing. may be it is bad luck and device is broken. I will write an update later

Re:I had the same question a few weeks ago

[kusmin]

Update-1 Tested again; could not make uploading of notes to work. I am going to send the device to the online shop where I bought it. I hope I will get a reimbursement or another device which functions properly. in the second case I'll post some more info on testing.

Linux drivers for Pegasus Technologies digital pen

[Anonymous Coward]

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.