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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."
The Wacom Inkling should work fine, I think - it just dumps out vector files.
The best is the enemy of the good
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
What is it with Slashdot and pens today?
The linux Wacom driver project is maintained by a Wacom employee and has positive feedback
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.
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!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
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.
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.
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
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.
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 )).