Re: [OSM-talk] Using digital tablet for drawing maps
On 25/01/2010 10:29, Igor Brejc wrote: Hi everyone, I'm thinking about buying a digital tablet and use it for drawing maps in JOSM/Potlatch/... Has anyone had any experience with digital tablets and GIS work (or even better - OSM work). I'm considering buying something cheap, like Wacom Bamboo (link is below), but I don't know if it is really usable for this kind of work (compared to a mouse). I find the mouse to be too sensitive and difficult to pinpoint on something (unless I reconfigure it for mapping work each time, which is tedious). Thanks in advance, Igor Brejc http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Touch-Small-Tablet/dp/B002OOWC3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=electronicsqid=1264415098sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Touch-Small-Tablet/dp/B002OOWC3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=electronicsqid=1264415098sr=8-1 I did use a tablet at one point, but I gave up. In principle it should be ideal and it is for most drawing and painting programs, and you quickly get used to the right button on the pen side and operating menus with it. It's not the tablet that's the problem - an A6 size one is fine. The problem is Java. It seems to insist that for a mouse click to be recognized properly the coordinates at the down press have to be the same as those at the up-press. With a mouse this is a problem sometimes if you nudge it, but with a tablet it is impossible. There is a plugin for JOSM which tries to remedy this (by checking if the up and down are within a certain distance of each other). It wasn't right and I hacked it a bit, but it still isn't quite right because there is often a delay before sensing mouse clicks - if you are creating a way, you frequently click-click-click quite fast along the track, and JOSM quickly gets behind and the mouse tracking gets confused. This happens using a mouse as well and is very frustrating, but it is much worse with a tablet in my experience. So I think more could be done in JOSM to work around wjhat are essentially failings in Java's mouse handling, but it is not that great at the moment. It's not that you can't use it, you just have to be so much more deliberate and patient in entering clicks (and you do have to have the nearclick plugin) David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Using digital tablet for drawing maps
Funny you speak about that... I recently found back my ages old Wacom Tablet and tried it with Merkaartor. Looks like Qt has some kind of builtin supoort for tablets (or was it Windows 7?) but it worked out-of-the-box (in tablet mode, not mouse emulation). That made me add a hand grabbing icon to Merkaartor, just for niceness ;-) - Chris - On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:29, Igor Brejc igor.br...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone, I'm thinking about buying a digital tablet and use it for drawing maps in JOSM/Potlatch/... Has anyone had any experience with digital tablets and GIS work (or even better - OSM work). I'm considering buying something cheap, like Wacom Bamboo (link is below), but I don't know if it is really usable for this kind of work (compared to a mouse). I find the mouse to be too sensitive and difficult to pinpoint on something (unless I reconfigure it for mapping work each time, which is tedious). Thanks in advance, Igor Brejc http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Touch-Small-Tablet/dp/B002OOWC3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=electronicsqid=1264415098sr=8-1 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Using digital tablet for drawing maps
David, Yes, I noticed this clicking problem with JOSM myself, and it is annoying. Is it Java or just JOSM-specific problem? In OS (Windows at least), the mouse-down and mouse-up events are treated separately, so I don't see why it would be problem if the mouse moves in between. Anyway, thanks for the info. Looks like I'm going to have to borrow a tablet and test it out with JOSM before buying. Igor On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 12:01 PM, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.comwrote: On 25/01/2010 10:29, Igor Brejc wrote: Hi everyone, I'm thinking about buying a digital tablet and use it for drawing maps in JOSM/Potlatch/... Has anyone had any experience with digital tablets and GIS work (or even better - OSM work). I'm considering buying something cheap, like Wacom Bamboo (link is below), but I don't know if it is really usable for this kind of work (compared to a mouse). I find the mouse to be too sensitive and difficult to pinpoint on something (unless I reconfigure it for mapping work each time, which is tedious). Thanks in advance, Igor Brejc http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Touch-Small-Tablet/dp/B002OOWC3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=electronicsqid=1264415098sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Touch-Small-Tablet/dp/B002OOWC3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=electronicsqid=1264415098sr=8-1 I did use a tablet at one point, but I gave up. In principle it should be ideal and it is for most drawing and painting programs, and you quickly get used to the right button on the pen side and operating menus with it. It's not the tablet that's the problem - an A6 size one is fine. The problem is Java. It seems to insist that for a mouse click to be recognized properly the coordinates at the down press have to be the same as those at the up-press. With a mouse this is a problem sometimes if you nudge it, but with a tablet it is impossible. There is a plugin for JOSM which tries to remedy this (by checking if the up and down are within a certain distance of each other). It wasn't right and I hacked it a bit, but it still isn't quite right because there is often a delay before sensing mouse clicks - if you are creating a way, you frequently click-click-click quite fast along the track, and JOSM quickly gets behind and the mouse tracking gets confused. This happens using a mouse as well and is very frustrating, but it is much worse with a tablet in my experience. So I think more could be done in JOSM to work around wjhat are essentially failings in Java's mouse handling, but it is not that great at the moment. It's not that you can't use it, you just have to be so much more deliberate and patient in entering clicks (and you do have to have the nearclick plugin) David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Using digital tablet for drawing maps
David Earl david at frankieandshadow.com writes: I guess it depends who you ask. I think it's that Java and Windows take a different view about what constitutes a click as a combination of up and down events, rather than being a bug in anything. Having said that, the Java treatment is exceedingly unhelpful. It's not JOSM, though we could work around it in JOSM. I have noticed that when using OpenJUMP (Java GIS program) with Windows touch sceen tablet-PC that digitising goes fine with stylus but toggling visibility of layers by clicking a check box is almost impossible. Inspired by your remark on up and down events I made a test. It appeared that when drawing with the digitising tools the point is placed where I click the left button and it does not matter where I release the button. When I click the check box click and release must happen in the same place. Perhaps JOSM could be made to behave like OpenJUMP so that only the click down counts when drawing new features. I do not believe that in that mode there is any functionality programmed for click-and-drag. -Jukka Rahkonen- ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Using digital tablet for drawing maps
Cool, good to know. Igor On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Chris Browet c...@semperpax.com wrote: Funny you speak about that... I recently found back my ages old Wacom Tablet and tried it with Merkaartor. Looks like Qt has some kind of builtin supoort for tablets (or was it Windows 7?) but it worked out-of-the-box (in tablet mode, not mouse emulation). That made me add a hand grabbing icon to Merkaartor, just for niceness ;-) - Chris - On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:29, Igor Brejc igor.br...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone, I'm thinking about buying a digital tablet and use it for drawing maps in JOSM/Potlatch/... Has anyone had any experience with digital tablets and GIS work (or even better - OSM work). I'm considering buying something cheap, like Wacom Bamboo (link is below), but I don't know if it is really usable for this kind of work (compared to a mouse). I find the mouse to be too sensitive and difficult to pinpoint on something (unless I reconfigure it for mapping work each time, which is tedious). Thanks in advance, Igor Brejc http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Touch-Small-Tablet/dp/B002OOWC3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=electronicsqid=1264415098sr=8-1 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
