I am evaluating a Tablet-PC (Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook T4210) with Windows-XP
2005 vs. a desktop PC with Windows Vista and an external tablet (Cintiq
21UX) for use in online math-tutoring.

I was rather disappointed to find that the visual appearance of
handwriting (which is, audio aside, the primary mode of communication when
tutoring math online) is not nearly as good with the Cintiq/Vista system as
compared to the T4210/XP system.

I am comparing the visual appearance of handwriting using a shared
whiteboard that is based on InkOverlay. Since identical clients of that
whiteboard are running on both machines I can compare visual appearance of
handwriting captured and displayed by either system side by side on the same
InkOverlay based document. Handwriting captured by T4210/XP looks great on
both systems, but handwriting captured by Cintiq/Vista looks comparatively
bad on both.

In fact, it looks as if it had not been anti-aliased properly. I even
wondered whether the AntiAliased drawing attribute of the InkOverlay might
not be set to True by default under Vista. But no: the AntiAliased
attribute is set to True under Vista, too.

Besides the unpleasantly pixelized, shaky look of handwriting captured by
the Cintiq/Vista system there is another phenomenon that points in a similar
direction: the pen width used by the Cintiq/Vista system seems clearly
larger than the one used by the T4210/XP system, even though the shared
whiteboard sets the pen width on both systems to the exact same HIMETRIC
value. - How come? - I had thought that HIMETRIC was meant to be device
independent. - Has this to do with different ratios of screen resolution to
digitizer resolution?

I have already tried to get WACOM, who manufactures the digitizers for
both the T4210 and the Cintiq 21UX, to give a clear answer as to whether
this problem of the Cintiq/Vista system can be understood at the level of
what the digitizer is supposed to do (see:
http://www.wacom-europe.com/forum/to...TOPIC_ID=10002).
Although WACOM concedes that the Cintiq 21UX may transmit a lower number of
points per second than do their "older UD technology" based systems (i.e. a
typical Tablet-PC), that answer has left an opening for some alternative
explanation at the software level.

Thus my question: Has anyone else done a comparison between similar
systems (Tablet-PC+XP vs. external tablet+Vista) and found similar problems?
Can anyone assert with confidence that this problem cannot be mended at the
software level, that it is just an unfortunate consequence of some inherent
property of a Cintiq/Vista system (or any other external tablet+Vista system
for that matter)?

Regards,
Christian Stapfer

The issue is most likely the lack of a HID driver for the external tablet.
Without this, the ink system will just treat it as an ordinary mouse which
means that the ink is synthesized from crappy WM_MOUSEMOVE and
WM_LBUTTONDOWN messages like a standard mouse would produce. This makes ink
collection laggy, less accurate, and as you noted, non-pressure sensitive
regardless of whether or not the actual hardware supports pressure
sensitivity.

The solution, if Wacom supports it for that device, is to get a HID driver
from them. I think they called it a Penabled driver or something. I don't
use the external digitizers so I don't know, but others have reported
success.

To verify that the ink collection is seeing your digitizer as a mouse,
simply try using an InkOverlay and call SetAllTabletsMode(false) before
enabling it. This will tell it to collect only from true digitizers, not the
mouse.

--
Josh Einstein (Tablet PC MVP)
Einstein Technologies
Tablet Enhancements for Outlook - Try it free: www.tabletoutlook.com


"Christian Stapfer" <nobody@nowhere.nil> wrote in message
news:7d23e$474bc439$d9a26d04$18672@news.hispeed.ch ...
>I am evaluating a Tablet-PC (Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook T4210) with
>Windows-XP 2005 vs. a desktop PC with Windows Vista and an external tablet
>(Cintiq 21UX) for use in online math-tutoring.
>
> I was rather disappointed to find that the visual appearance of
> handwriting (which is, audio aside, the primary mode of communication when
> tutoring math online) is not nearly as good with the Cintiq/Vista system
> as compared to the T4210/XP system.
>
> I am comparing the visual appearance of handwriting using a shared
> whiteboard that is based on InkOverlay. Since identical clients of that
> whiteboard are running on both machines I can compare visual appearance of
> handwriting captured and displayed by either system side by side on the
> same InkOverlay based document. Handwriting captured by T4210/XP looks
> great on both systems, but handwriting captured by Cintiq/Vista looks
> comparatively bad on both.
>
> In fact, it looks as if it had not been anti-aliased properly. I even
> wondered whether the AntiAliased drawing attribute of the InkOverlay might
> not be set to True by default under Vista. But no: the AntiAliased
> attribute is set to True under Vista, too.
>
> Besides the unpleasantly pixelized, shaky look of handwriting captured by
> the Cintiq/Vista system there is another phenomenon that points in a
> similar direction: the pen width used by the Cintiq/Vista system seems
> clearly larger than the one used by the T4210/XP system, even though the
> shared whiteboard sets the pen width on both systems to the exact same
> HIMETRIC value. - How come? - I had thought that HIMETRIC was meant to be
> device independent. - Has this to do with different ratios of screen
> resolution to digitizer resolution?
>
> I have already tried to get WACOM, who manufactures the digitizers for
> both the T4210 and the Cintiq 21UX, to give a clear answer as to whether
> this problem of the Cintiq/Vista system can be understood at the level of
> what the digitizer is supposed to do (see:
> http://www.wacom-europe.com/forum/to...TOPIC_ID=10002).
> Although WACOM concedes that the Cintiq 21UX may transmit a lower number
> of points per second than do their "older UD technology" based systems
> (i.e. a typical Tablet-PC), that answer has left an opening for some
> alternative explanation at the software level.
>
> Thus my question: Has anyone else done a comparison between similar
> systems (Tablet-PC+XP vs. external tablet+Vista) and found similar
> problems? Can anyone assert with confidence that this problem cannot be
> mended at the software level, that it is just an unfortunate consequence
> of some inherent property of a Cintiq/Vista system (or any other external
> tablet+Vista system for that matter)?
>
> Regards,
> Christian Stapfer

"Josh Einstein" <josh@einsteintech.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3C7052CD-5675-4081-85E6-6A8C1444B8C6@microsoft.com...
> The issue is most likely the lack of a HID driver for the external tablet.
> Without this, the ink system will just treat it as an ordinary mouse which
> means that the ink is synthesized from crappy WM_MOUSEMOVE and
> WM_LBUTTONDOWN messages like a standard mouse would produce. This makes
> ink collection laggy, less accurate, and as you noted, non-pressure
> sensitive regardless of whether or not the actual hardware supports
> pressure sensitivity.
>
> The solution, if Wacom supports it for that device, is to get a HID driver
> from them.
> I think they called it a Penabled driver or something. I don't use the
> external digitizers so I don't know, but others have reported success.
>
> To verify that the ink collection is seeing your digitizer as a mouse,
> simply try using an InkOverlay and call SetAllTabletsMode(false) before
> enabling it. This will tell it to collect only from true digitizers, not
> the mouse.
>
> --
> Josh Einstein (Tablet PC MVP)
> Einstein Technologies
> Tablet Enhancements for Outlook - Try it free: www.tabletoutlook.com
>

Hi Josh,
thank you very much for your reply and your ideas: it tried
SetAllTabletsMode(false)
and found (what I suspected all along), that the problem must lie
elsewhere: the Cintiq 21UX is treated as a real tablet by InkOverlay.
So it appears that I really do have a HID driver for the Cintiq 21UX
from WACOM installed (even one developed explicitly for use
with Vista). I can also see that my whiteboard does get pressure
information from the Cintiq 21UX, so its input surely doesn't get
interpreted as mere mouse movement.

Here is a screen dump that illustrates the problem (i.e. what
I don't like about how handwriting is captured by the
Cintiq 21UX):
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/mathc...1UXvsT4210.png

There are three sections separated by horizontal green lines:
In the first section I have written two lines of formulas with
different pen widths on the Cintiq 21UX tablet.
In the second section I have written the (approximately) same
two lines of formulas using the same two pen widths on the
Lifebook T4210.
Finally, in the third section I have copied two small pieces and
resized them to show how ugly handwriting captured by
the Cintiq 21UX really is as compared to handwriting captured
by the Lifebook T4210.

Given the relatively vague answers to my questions regarding
this problem by WACOM, I am still in the dark as to what
its exact cause might be. What surprises me, too, is that WACOM
apparently is not much interested in a problem that seems to
throw a rather bad light on their top of the line external tablet,
the Cintiq 21UX.

Regards,
Christian Stapfer

>
> "Christian Stapfer" <nobody@nowhere.nil> wrote in message
> news:7d23e$474bc439$d9a26d04$18672@news.hispeed.ch ...
>>I am evaluating a Tablet-PC (Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook T4210) with
>>Windows-XP 2005 vs. a desktop PC with Windows Vista and an external tablet
>>(Cintiq 21UX) for use in online math-tutoring.
>>
>> I was rather disappointed to find that the visual appearance of
>> handwriting (which is, audio aside, the primary mode of communication
>> when tutoring math online) is not nearly as good with the Cintiq/Vista
>> system as compared to the T4210/XP system.
>>
>> I am comparing the visual appearance of handwriting using a shared
>> whiteboard that is based on InkOverlay. Since identical clients of that
>> whiteboard are running on both machines I can compare visual appearance
>> of handwriting captured and displayed by either system side by side on
>> the same InkOverlay based document. Handwriting captured by T4210/XP
>> looks great on both systems, but handwriting captured by Cintiq/Vista
>> looks comparatively bad on both.
>>
>> In fact, it looks as if it had not been anti-aliased properly. I even
>> wondered whether the AntiAliased drawing attribute of the InkOverlay
>> might not be set to True by default under Vista. But no: the AntiAliased
>> attribute is set to True under Vista, too.
>>
>> Besides the unpleasantly pixelized, shaky look of handwriting captured
>> by the Cintiq/Vista system there is another phenomenon that points in a
>> similar direction: the pen width used by the Cintiq/Vista system seems
>> clearly larger than the one used by the T4210/XP system, even though the
>> shared whiteboard sets the pen width on both systems to the exact same
>> HIMETRIC value. - How come? - I had thought that HIMETRIC was meant to
>> be device independent. - Has this to do with different ratios of screen
>> resolution to digitizer resolution?
>>
>> I have already tried to get WACOM, who manufactures the digitizers for
>> both the T4210 and the Cintiq 21UX, to give a clear answer as to whether
>> this problem of the Cintiq/Vista system can be understood at the level of
>> what the digitizer is supposed to do (see:
>> http://www.wacom-europe.com/forum/to...TOPIC_ID=10002).
>> Although WACOM concedes that the Cintiq 21UX may transmit a lower number
>> of points per second than do their "older UD technology" based systems
>> (i.e. a typical Tablet-PC), that answer has left an opening for some
>> alternative explanation at the software level.
>>
>> Thus my question: Has anyone else done a comparison between similar
>> systems (Tablet-PC+XP vs. external tablet+Vista) and found similar
>> problems? Can anyone assert with confidence that this problem cannot be
>> mended at the software level, that it is just an unfortunate consequence
>> of some inherent property of a Cintiq/Vista system (or any other external
>> tablet+Vista system for that matter)?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Christian Stapfer
>