Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hey everyone, I saw some threads about this but most of them were from pre-2010 so thought I would post a new thread.

My mother has been doing some studying into graphic arts and design and in the last class she took at the local college she found that graphics tablets worked really well for her as her hands tremble quite a bit using a mouse. Now that she is doing online courses for it I want to get her a graphics pad of her own to use at home. She is a huge fan of Open Office (actually converted me to it when I needed to do writing for work and didn't want to buy the new Microsoft suite) so I want to make sure the tablet I get can at least some what work with OO. Are there any recommended tablets to use? I see that there is no official support but some tablets have been reported to have varying degrees of success in the past such as the Wacom tablets. I don't know what ones she used in her class and she does not remember so I am starting at square one. Can anyone make some recommendations on what graphics tablet I could purchase to make this easy for her? Or anyone with experience using a certain tablet and making it work with Open Office/Draw? Thanks for everything in advance!

I went to a store as suggested and was talking to a really nice salesperson about what drawing tablet would work best and he was able to give me suggestions based on personal experience( good to know even the PC store employees use OO!). We chatted for a bit and he suggested that I get a Wacom Intuos drawing tablet but it seemed a little out of my price range at the time. I thought that I should check and see what I could get one of them for used, and found some good prices on http://www.for-sale.co.uk/graphics-tablet. I won't be able to return it if there are any compatablity issues but I don't think there will be from what the guy I was talking to was saying. Thanks for your help!

Doing some quick research (about an hours worth) indicates to me that some graphic tablets are compatible, but the compatibility issue isn't (necessarily) with Open Office, but with the OS on your system.
I found some that stated they were for Windows, some that said Windows 10, some Macs, some iPad, some android tablet, etc.
I would recommend that you get the tablet from a local store, rather than online, as that way if it's not compatible you might be able to take it back for a refund or exchange for another that might work.

Thank you for the quick reply Russel, and doing so much research. I am going to be speaking to some of the computer shops around and see what kind of tablets they can order and then do some research on those tablets before anything else now. I might send some emails out to the customer service departments of the companies once I narrow down my search as well, thank you again.

It is recommended that you do any graphics work in an application designed for graphics, like a Graphics Editor which supports using a tablet, and save the created image. Bring the completed image into Draw.

See [Solved] Can't export my giant image from Draw which discusses that Draw is a vector based application and therefore not very good for doing pixel based manipulations.

See [Tutorial] Some useful hints on using images for a discussion on how best to handle images in Writer - much applies to Draw.

GIMP Is free, very powerful Graphic Editor, but has a steep learning curve. GIMP supports tablets and can do amazing things. Search Google with gimp tablet.