Electronic Pen and Inkwell

andrewhicks · #1 May 21st, 2003, 10:19 AM

Hi,

A friend of mine was enquiring about the Pegasus electronic pen that allows you to "draw" diectly into apps and notes on the PC.

He has a Mac and was wondering if there was a equivalent system with OS X. I know that graphics tablets are supposed to be recognized by inkwell, but are there any apps that accept line drawings with such a pen system, and is there anything out there that does the same kind of job?

Thanks
Andrew

symphonix · #2 May 21st, 2003, 09:53 PM

Currently the Inkwell system in Mac OS X only works with Wacom pen tablets and not other brands.

It works within ANY application that accepts text, and it also allows you to sketch a line drawing that will automatically be placed into an rich-text document such as in Word or Mail. You can, for instance, be handwriting an email in Mail or Entourage, and just draw a little map or something and it will be dropped into the message as an image.

Simply open up the Inkpad utility, and you'll see a bit of blue-lined paper to write on. You can write on this and the handwriting will be interpreted as text. If you start drawing on it, and cross a few lines, then Inkpad assumes it is a drawing. There is also a drawing mode built into Inkpad that you can switch to on the toolbar (denoted by a little star, of all things).

And, of course, you could always use your favorite image editor, such as PhotoShop, to do your drawing and just paste the result into whatever document you want. The advantages being pressure/tilt sensitivty, colour, and a helluva lot more flexibility.

andrewhicks · #3 May 22nd, 2003, 03:06 PM

Thanks for the info.

If you plug in a Wacom tablet, does inkpad magically appear? I can't see it anywhere on my computer now. Is it hidden somewhere?

Andrew

symphonix · #4 May 22nd, 2003, 08:50 PM

That's exactly right. The Ink preference panel only appears when you have plugged in a Wacom tablet. Once you're in this preference pane, you can make the settings for Inkpad and how you want it to behave.

And, although a Wacom tablet will operate okay straight out of the box, you will want to install the latest Wacom drivers to make it work reliably in all programs, otherwise it will act a little weird.