openSUSE includes both CellWriter and xstroke for gesture recognition. Both applications accept gestures executed with the pen or other pointing devices as input for applications on the X Window System.
With CellWriter, you can write characters into a grid of cells—the writing is instantly recognized on a character basis. After you have finished writing, you can send the input to the currently focused application. Before you can use CellWriter for gesture recognition, the application needs to be trained to recognize your handwriting: You need to train each character of a certain map of keys (untrained characters are not activated and thus cannot be used).
Procedure 33.1. Training CellWriter
Start CellWriter from the main menu or with cellwriter from the command line. On the first start, CellWriter automatically starts in the training mode. In training mode it shows a set of characters of the currently chosen key map.
Enter the gesture you would like to use for a character into the respective character's cell. With the first input, the background changes its color to white, whereas the character itself is shown in light grey. Repeat the gesture multiple times until the character changes its color to black. Untrained characters are shown on a light grey or brown background (depending on the desktop's color scheme).
Repeat this step until you have trained CellWriter for all characters you need.
If you want to train CellWriter for another language, click the button and select a language from the tab. the configuration dialog. Click the button and select the key map from the drop-down box at the bottom right corner of the window. Now repeat your training for the new map of keys.
After having finished the training for the map of keys, click the button to switch to the normal mode.
In the normal mode, the CellWriter windows shows a couple of empty cells in which to enter the gestures. The characters are not sent to another application until you click the button, so you can correct or delete characters before you use them as input. Characters that have been recognized with a low degree of confidence will appear highlighted. To correct your input, use the context menu that appears on right-clicking a cell. To delete a character, either use your pen's eraser, or middle-click with the mouse to clear the cell. After finishing your input in CellWriter, define which application should receive the input by clicking into the application's window. Then send the input to the application by clicking .
If you click the button in CellWriter, you get a virtual keyboard that can be used instead of the handwriting recognition.
To hide CellWriter, close the CellWriter window. The application now appears as icon in your system tray. To show the input window again, click the icon in the system tray.
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 an OpenOffice.org Writer).
To activate the 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.