Pen Tablet support and a usability study

[Bert Freudenberg]

On 13.04.2008, at 02:56, Patrick Dubroy wrote:

> For the last couple months, I've been working on the higher-level
> support for the XO Pen Tablet (for more information, see here:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pen_Tablet_Support).
>
> If anyone's interested, I've got a couple of activities available
> which will let you play with the tablet on an XO:
>
> - TabletAreaTest
> (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pen_Tablet_Support/GTK_Widget#Sample_Activity 
> )
> demonstrates a GTK widget that is mapped to tablet input
> - tabletui (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pen_Tablet_UI#Prototype)
> explores some user interface prototypes for the unconstrained drawing
> case (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pen_Tablet_UI#Unconstrained_drawing)
>
> These activities have been developed for build 656, meaning they don't
> require any special driver support (other than /dev/input/event<x>).
> I'd love to see people give these a go and let me know what they
> think.
>
> I also just completed a user study on some of my prototype user
> interfaces. I've summarized the results here:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pen_Tablet_UI/User_Study
>
> Feedback is welcome -- either directly, or on the appropriate Talk  
> page.


I hope you got a lot more feedback privately than I saw on the list ...

Anyway, I finally found time to try your TabletUI activity. Thank you  
very much for that! It works well to test out tablet usage.

One problem I found when using your "dynamic" mapping mode is that I  
had intended the input window to stay fixed until the cursor is moved.  
That is, it should not be moved whenever you lower the pen, but only  
when the pen is not used but the finger moves the cursor somewhere  
else. Otherwise (as it is currently) it is rather awkward to use since  
the window jumps around like mad and each stroke starts at the same  
spot (where you left the cursor). Also, I think the cursor should be  
turned off while drawing with the pen - that is, while the pen window  
is showing. Moving the cursor by finger should show the cursor and  
hide the pen window.

The other issue looks like a hardware/ec/driver one: I have to press  
*very* hard to even get tablet events. Using this as a writing pad is  
next to impossible. Also, I get a lot of erratic events, its jumping  
all over the place at times.

Unless this can be fixed I have no great hopes for using the tablet as  
intended. Do you know the state of development in this area?

- Bert -