OpenOffice.org with a Tablet PC

[jaspercat]

Welcome beginner. Please answer all of the questions below which may provide information necessary to answer your question.
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Which version of OpenOffice.org are you using?
What Operating System (version) are you using?
What is your question or comment?

I am about to invest in a Fujitsu Tablet PC running Windows XP pro TABLET version:

Will Open Office work with the tablet virtual pen and ink like it will in mS Office 2003 and 2007?

Cheers!

[foxcole]

Welcome, jaspercat.

Unfortunately, that kind of functionality is the responsibility of the device manufacturer, not the office suite programmers. It works with Office programs because it was designed to work with Office programs. OOo will run on your tablet PC because you're getting WinXP, but whether the pen works is a different question.

Please do check with them and let us know what they say. Someone else a month or two ago was asking about using OOo on a pen-tablet system too, so there is some interest in it.

Maybe if OOo isn't already supported, you can give them a nudge and suggest that OOo has a global reach and is increasingly used by European governments, so would be worth supporting just to keep itself visible in the market share of users who are abandoning Office.

Good luck!!

[ps61318]

I beg to differ. This most certainly is NOT a function of the device, nor the responsibility of the device manufacturer. It IS a function of the OS and whether or not the hooks to the device are in place - thus, tablets do not come with Windows XP "vanilla", they come with Windows XP Tablet Edition. Along with that, the applications need to have the proper support to communicate with the OS for pen functionality to work - beyond simple mousing around.

I assert this because my Acer tablet came with a number of NON-OFFICE, NON-MICROSOFT applications that all function with the pen in various ways. And those apps will work on any tablet; they are not exclusive to Acer.

So Windows publishes the pen API's, and it is up to the app developer to take advantage or not - again, for anything beyond mouse emulation.

Thanks!

[foxcole]

My response is based on many similar questions. Please search the forum for pen, tablet, and other types of input devices. Some devices can work with many different kinds of software and some cannot. Some work only with MS Office programs---so "most certainly is not a function of the device" isn't quite accurate.

Have you considered the possibility that your tablet came pre-loaded with non-Microsoft applications because Acer knew the software would be compatible with the pen---because the pen is a common input device for tablet PCs?

Historically the response to OOo users who request device manufacturers to support OOo is that the OOo community is too small to warrant the effort to make their devices compatible. Fortunately for OOo and its users, that's becoming no longer a valid argument.

[MGAW]

You can say that, but I think it is not true.
Tablet PC Input Panel is a Windows utility. Although I have a HP tablet PC with a Wacom penabled tablet, it uses not justwrite, but the utility from Vista. openoffice to use the tablet, by forcing the tablet window in front of the others. But if could get integrated a bit better when Ms office when I approach the tablet with my run, a little icon is showing which opens the handwriting window.
You can write adresses in internet explorer, yes, I know, a Microsoft product. But I also succeed in doing it in Firefox!!! So Firefox is obviously using the utility from Windows.
I think the market for tablet pc's is booming, Mine wasn't even as expensive as in earlier days: it was more or less the price of a good notebook. And yes, it is very nice to write a bit with your tablet on your lap. My experience is, that if you use it for navigating through a document, it is easy to make little notes on places. Of course: if you write a whole document, you won't use it. But correction: that is something different! Would be a nice feature .

[RobertJTownley]

There are really only a few lines of code to enable stylus / TabletPC input within OpenOffice Writer. More advanced operations such as in calc may take a little more work, but basic functionality is not hard. Regardless, a few lines of code would make it much easier to use with a stylus.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms812492.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx