Appendix E. Support of Tablet PCs / E.3. Using Common Tablet PC Features
	E.2. Configuring Your Wacom Device		E.4. Troubleshooting

Using Common Tablet PC Features

After your Wacom device has been configured, you can now make use of your pen as input device.

Using the Virtual Keyboard

To log in to the KDE or GNOME desktop or to unlock the screen, you can either enter your username and password as usual or via the virtual keyboard, xvkbd, displayed below the login field. To configure the keyboard or to access the integrated help, click the xvkbd field at the left lower corner to open the xvkbd main menu.

Figure E.1. xvkbd Virtual Keyboard

If you want to use xvkbd after login, start it from the main menu or with xvkbd from a shell.

Rotating Your Display

When rotating your Tablet PC monitor, the orientation of your display and of your graphics tablet is not automatically adjusted. For the KDE desktop, use KRandRTray to rotate or resize your display manually on the fly. KRandRTray is a KDE applet for the RANDR extension of the X server.

Start KRandRTray from the main menu or with krandrtray from a shell. This adds the KRandRTray icon to your system tray.
To rotate your display, click the icon and select the desired orientation from the context menu. Your display is immediately tilted to the new direction. Also the orientation of the graphics tablet changes so it can still interpret the movement of the pen correctly.

For the GNOME desktop, a similar functionality can currently only be provided by a work-around. See Section E.4, “Troubleshooting” for more information.

Using Gesture Recognition

With xstroke, you can use gestures with your pen or other pointing devices as input for applications on the X Window System. The xstroke alphabet is a unistroke alphabet that resembles the Graffiti* alphabet. When activated, xstroke sends the input to the currently focused window.

Start xstroke from the main menu or with xstroke from a shell. This adds a pencil icon to your system tray.
Start the application for which you want to create text input with the pen (for example, a terminal window, a text editor, or OpenOffice.org Writer).
To activate gesture recognition mode, click the pencil icon once.
Perform some gestures on the graphics tablet with the pen or another pointing device. xstroke captures the gestures and transfers them to text that appears in the application window that has the focus.
To switch focus to a different window, click the desired window with the pen and hold for a moment (or use the keyboard shortcut defined in your desktop's control center).
To deactivate the gesture recognition mode, click the pencil icon again.

Taking Notes and Sketching with the Pen

To create drawings with the pen, you can use a professional graphics editor like The GIMP or try one of the note taking applications, Xournal or Jarnal. With both Xournal and Jarnal, you can take notes, create drawings, or comment PDF files with the pen. As a Java-based application available for several platforms, Jarnal also offers basic collaboration features. For more information, refer to http://www.dklevine.com/general/software/tc1000/jarnal-net.htm. When saving your contents, Jarnal stores the data in an archive format (*.jaj) that also contains a file in SVG format.

Start Jarnal or Xournal from the main menu or by entering jarnal or xournal in a shell. To comment a PDF file in Xournal, for example, select File+Annotate PDF and open the PDF file from your file system. Use the pen or another pointing device to annotate the PDF then save your changes with File+Print to PDF.

Figure E.2. Annotating a PDF with Xournal

Dasher is another useful application. It was designed for situations where keyboard input is impractical or unavailable. With a bit of training, you can rapidly enter larger amounts of text using only the pen (or other input devices—it can even be driven with an eye tracker).

Start Dasher from the main menu or with dasher from a shell. Move your pen in one direction and the applications starts to zoom into the letters on the right side. From the letters passing the cross hairs in the middle, the text is created or predicted and is printed to the upper part of the window. To stop or start writing, click the display once with the pen. Modify the zooming speed at the bottom of the window.

Figure E.3. Editing Texts with Dasher

The Dasher concept works for many languages. For more information, refer to the Dasher Web site, which offers comprehensive documentation, demonstrations and training texts. Find it at http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/