Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Thanks for your suggestion!

As far as I can remember , you are the second - third people to raise out the request. It is on my idea list.

But I want to clarify something:

1) Do you want the toolbar appear in fullscreen mode?

2) If I drop the left / right buttons in tool bar , and replace it by Full Screen mode button. Do you accept the change?

oh... ok , I will add a "Select" button to the right of color bar in next release.

ah yes , good observation! It is confusing. It will add hints of file type to user.

I am not quite understand the problem. Do you mind to talk more? Thx~

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

I would leave the toolbar as it is... just add a full screen button to the right (it seems that you have room for it). Going crazy you could have a 3 stage "fullscreen" (normal, full screen with toolbar, full screen with just the image so you can show someone your master piece). I would also default to the "fullscreen with toolbar" (like the browser)

These are the steps:
1. create a new page
2. draw a big "1" on the screen
3. click the button to go to the right
4. draw a big "2" on the screen
(if you go back the thumbnail for this page will have a "1")
5. open the page again and delete the "1"
if you go back now the thumbnail is empty.

Because is so easy to keep going (what is great) the first "area" does not have any special meaning... I would suggest that you can update the thumbnail with whatever is last seen on the screen before the user click "back"... or just make sure to "move" automatically the drawing so you always have something on the "first area".

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

haha , yes , it is crazy to have different fullscreen mode.

ok , It is on my pending feature list.

Thanks , I understand what you mean now.

Any more people think that it should take the last view section as thumbnail/snapshot? As it change the behaviour and affect the user experience. I would like to listen fore more opinion first.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

hey :)
looking very nice
theres a few usability things however
with a generic "undo" feature, 90% of needing to remove random strokes would be gone whilst making notes I often draw the wrong letter and just want to go back, for me currently this usecase is catered for with 1 button.

when you pan out and show the sketches on the group, you do not account for the drawn area, so its entirely possible to have a thumbnail which is blank on a sketch which is useful.

combined with the lack of undo if you wish to revert an image there is no way to do so, making destructive edits to the live sketch and having no way to back out of the screen without reverting is a little disconcerting (perhaps a "revert" menu item) - liqbase works by saving a new instance each time and never destroying an item.

there is a bug in your stroke erasure code
I managed to have a vertical stroke in the middle of a word which was not erasable (it was how I found out about the destructive closure/revert thing above)
it stayed there whilst the eraser managed to get everything else but I could not undo this - beware if small children play with your device..

overall :) nice sketching tool, best I have seen in a while and has echoes of some of the liqbase sketching.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Thx!

Undo feature is already on my plan, but not available on next release. However, I may change the priority , I think you know about my plan on libpenpen as you are also on the competition thread.

I am going to release a library version of PenPen. In designing the library , classes for undo is also designed , they are not complex (Just the class naming is crazy). So I may implement it first. But due to the feature freeze , I will not make it during the voting period.

By the way , I want to ask everybody for their opinion on undo feature.

There should have a "Undo" button , but where should I place it?

1) On menu

2) On tool bar

(Only a single button space leave. It could be either of Full screen or undo)

haha , you found a bug. I know this since the first release. But seem no hurt (nobody complains it), I work on other stuff first. ok , I will try to fix it.

By the way , I find liqbase in discussion. It don't release to N900? Is the development freeze?

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

By the way , beside talking about the feature of PenPen Sketchbook. I would like share about my thoughts on PenPen development. What it means to other developer , and what software that will be developed togather with PenPen.

Firstly, PenPen SketchBook is never the goal of what I want to develop for Maemo/Meego. My goal is a tool of task management(GTD) , brainstorming (mindmap) using handwritting. However, it is not able to archive in a short time. Then, I decided to first make a relatively simple software , PenPen SketchBook , it is used to test the response from user , and as a building block of my goal. So far the resulting is quite good :)

As it is an open source project , I don't mind to share the code to other project , even it is a commercial and closed source (They must obey the license). It is a waste if the developed module can not be used. For example , the color selection dialog. (The default Qt color selection dialog is buggy on Maemo)

Moreover, the core of PenPen , vector drawing and erasing engine , may benefit another software project. Therefore , I have started a sub-project called libpenpen , which allow other developer use PenPen's vector drawing engine to let user draw on their software. The code prototype is ready on source repository , but I have not tested seriously. (Will have another post on development talk)

The current license of PenPen is GPL v2 , so if you use libpenpen , you should open your source code. As I have already said , I don't mind other to use penpen as their closed source software. So I may change the license of library to LGPL or BSD once it is ready.

Beside the drawing engine , I am also developing a database object relational mapping (ORM) library for Sqlite/Qt. When I develop PenPen 0.1 , over 60% of time spent on the database model!! It is really out of my expectation. I am not demanding for performance , I just want to have a database model which can easy find and insert record. Qt / Sqlite is not the simple enough.

Android / iPhone /Maemo all has the same problem , missing an easy-to-use database ORM. Although Qt has a ORM mapper, QDjango , I think it could have a better solution. Then I spent few night time to study the problem. Finally , I have come out an idea on how to make a better ORM. The prototype code is in my PC. It looks okay at this moment. It could declare a database model easily.

Once it is ready , I will deprecate all the database code in PenPen and migrate to the new library. I believe this project can further reduce the development time for Maemo/Meego application. (So I will not touch the database code before the ORM is ready , the promised feature of "sorting" will be delayed... )

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Hi all,

The polling of first N900 coding competition will be finished soon. I would like to thanks for everybody who voted for PenPen.

And if you are not yet voted , please vote for PenPen. Your support is my greatest reward for developing open source software!

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

The contest is over. I would like to thanks again for everyone support PenPen! Ofcoz , I will still keep the development of PenPen and libpenpen. :)

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Great app, looking forward to more updates in the future :)

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Yup, looking forward to fullscreen mode :D

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

well , just committed the full screen mode code to vcs

but work not good in portrait mode , Qt is not quite ready for it ~_~

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Hi,

The works toward 0.3 release is almost completed. One of the newly introduced feature is image background. You could load an image from the mobile as the background , or use the predefined template. Three kind of templates are available:

1) Graph Lines
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2152786/penp...807-110013.png

2) Grid
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2152786/penp...807-110022.png

3) Check Box
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2152786/penp...807-105957.png

However, I am not sure do the template suitable for your need. (e.g Would it be too small for checkbox? and the line spacing is too thin or ...?) Moreover , I don't know the correct name of the template , it is great if somebody can suggest for a better name.

So before official release the software , I would like to hear user's comment on the template and the changes of UI. Do anybody interested to test the software? Ofcoz , it is always welcome to submit a new template :)

I didn't uploaded to extras-devel , I just push the binary in my dropbox account. You could find at:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2152786/penp...3r76_armel.deb

Thanks

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Looks good. This app is looking better with each update :D
Haven't tried the new one yet but I'm assuming it's possible to change/remove templates without having the writings removed? Also, are the templates exported along with the writing?

I'm currently using the version in Extras and I noticed a bug with the way the eraser works. Frequently, for small lines/dots, the eraser has troubles erasing them. The bug can be repeated by simply drawing dots/small lines and attempting to erase them.

Thanks

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Both of the answer is yes , it won't remove writing for changing templates. The template is also exported togather with the writing. However, only the written area is exported instead of the whole page. I am thinking about how to handle the problem.

The problem should be already fixed in this release. :)

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Looks good !

Some comments :

The 'Graph lines' template only renders for the first page. After that, scrolling in any direction shows a blank background.

The Grid background, in black lines, might be easier on the eye if the lines were rather blue, as the graph lines are :)

When selecting a template, the Color field under the Preview image offers the possibilty to select a colour, but the background remains white when returning to the sketch.

It might be an idea to include a blank template with the lines and grids, in case a user wants to revert to blank.

Thanks for including Fullscreen option :)

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Instead of blue, I think a lighter shade of black/gray would suffice. Maybe some added transparency to the grid and graph lines will be good.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Or allow the user to choose their own colour for the lines/grids as well...

But for now, agree with unkno, pleas lighten the grid a touch !

*edit*

more detail on the select colour background bug :

Select new sketch and background eg graph lines.

Select Color from the field below the Preview image.

Click OK...back in the sketch, the background is still white, and remains so if you scroll up or down.

But if you scroll left or right, the background correctly displays the colour chosen (minus graph lines).


P.S. as far as naming the templates, suggest Lines rather than Graph Lines.

Oh, and the check boxes do seem a little small, try increasing the size of each box by half again.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Is it blank even scroll in up/down direction?

hmmm... now I tried to set a color in light blue , please comment it.

good and done.

There have a clear button to remove image. Do it enough?

Then the interface will be much more complicated...

By the way , no any comment on the check box template and line spacing?

Anyway , a new version is uploaded at (only changed the template)

Please comment:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2152786/penp...76_armel-2.deb

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

The graph blocks look better.

The lines still only render on the first page of the sketch.

Thanks ! That works well !

See my edited comments above about the check boxes.

The line spacing is fine.

Setting the colour background now works.

Sure ! It was just a suggestion. But I don't want this lovely app to become needlessly complicated ;)

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Thanks for the comment from SallyJane and unkno!

A new version is available at (r77):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2152786/penp...3r77_armel.deb

Changes:
- Increased the size of check box and added extra spacing between check box
- Graph line => Lines , and set repeat on x-axis.
- Minor bug fix on background selection.

If it is fine , I will release an official 0.3 release.

Thanks again!

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Colour selection seems fixed.

Check boxes look much better.

The margin on the Lines template shifts across the page every time one scrolls left or right (in screenshots, scrolling right)

By the same token, checkboxes are only visible if scrolling up or down from the opening page.

Maybe it's easier for you to set Penpen up so that left sided markings (margin, checkbox) only render vertically from the opening page ?

Users who want to use a margin might find it easier to scroll around or view the export image of a note that has only one margin, rather than multiple ones.

Thoughts, anyone ? :)

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Thanks for your app, is there any plan to have widgets for this?
i mean like Sticky Notes, it will be nice to have small page (like Sticky Notes) where we can draw directly without need to open the program.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

@dana.s ,venemo (the developer of Sticky Notes) is apparently working on such an app (see his signature for details)

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

@SallyJane, thanks but i couldn't find anything related, here is his signature:
"__________________
First N900 Coding Competition - Thanks for your votes! - Stay tuned for Sticky Scribble Notes!

The newest invention: Sticky Notes
User guide: How to set up Skype
For developers: Howto: Dynamic widgets, Howto: E-mail/SMS-style notifications from Qt Apps"

Plus, I like PenPen's style, so it will be nice to heave widget for it, just a thought.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Good to have a screenshot to state the problem :)

The problem is related to how page scrolling work.

In landscape non-fullscreen mode , the window size is 800x350. However , scrolling will not move across the whole page. For example , if you move right , the window will only shift 770 pixel instead of 800 pixel.

Because if you move across the whole page , you will not see previous written content. The newly writing content may not be aligned with previous one. Unless it is changed to move the whole page , the problem can not be solved. (Or I should remove the red line?)

Let's me explain about how background works first. It is controlled by 4 parameters.

1) Background color
2) Background image
3) Repeat draw on x-axis
4) Repeat draw on y-axis

The lines and grid template set (3) and (4) to true , so it will draw on the whole page , you will see those lines in any direction. However , check list template only set (4) , so you won't see other checkbox on left/right direction

The reason for not set (4) is simple , I don't expect people will write extra check item in left/right direction. Do you think that it is really needed?

hmmm.. I don't have any plan to write desktop widget (may be becoz I don't really use desktop widget...). But I have started a subproject of PenPen , it is called as libpenpen, which allow other people to embed hand writing area in their application. So if anybody are interested, they could take the library to develop it.

wow , good!

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

@dana.s, See in the sig : "Stay tuned for Sticky Scribble Notes"

@ benlau :

Absolutely not. I'm not sure that people need the extra margin left or right either, but that is for other users to give their opinions (I thought the expanding red margin might be a bug;) )

Thanks for the explanations !

I'm very happy with this version

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Looks good enough for release :D
Hopefully it'll gather those 10 votes for QA quickly and enter into Extras.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Hi all,

I would like to announce that 0.3 release is now available on extras-testing! (And thanks for all testers!)

Changes:

Features
• Supported image background
• Few kind of background templates are available
• Supported zooming (not-editable)
• Supported full screen mode

Minor improvement
• Background dialog - Added a color select button
• Extra margin is added to PNG export
• Improved the drawing quality for thick line

Bug fix
• Can not erase vertical stroke
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php%3...postcount%3D44

If you like PenPen , and think that it have fullfilled the QA requirements. Please vote for it ! So that it will appear in extras.

Screenshot:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2152786/penp...807-110013.png

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

hey there
i know its not the place but really need help and it is easy but can't find how to do it on the website....
i deleted a file from /home/opt/user/bin the file name is something about sketch launch, i just need somewhere to download the file from or if someone can send it via e-mail (irameltzer@hotmail.com) so i can put it back there and sketch will work again..
sorry and thanks

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Hi, thanks for the nice tool. If you are looking for some good ideas, there were a tool called inkwp for the Sharp Zaurus. I am missing that so much. It was developed by a japanese guy and so there is not much documentation/ information in english about that tool.
It is still out there and from the screenshot maybe you get some idea, what it ist about.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconVa...550/inkwp.html
In short, you can do handwriting but it is enhanced with some kind of autozoom. So you write a little big bigger an it resize your writing to the line. This will allow you to have a better handwriting.
There is also carriage return, backspace, and space you can use within handwriting,
I am not really familiar with the buildsystem/ SDK of maemo, but there are still the Bitbakes from inkwp available:
If you want to build and try to get some inspiration. I also have a running version on my SL 5500, but not sure how to get screencap movie from that device.
Hier also a report translated by google:
Inkwp on Zaurus report

I made a very poor video of the application running on my old Zaurus so you get an idea about the application.
Would be really nice to have such functionality in PenPen running on N900.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9CX4InCXNo
Thanks a lot.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Fedmahn Kassad,

I like Inkwp! It is a great design. In fact it is time to think about what is next for PenPen. The idea in my mind includes handing writing task manager and document writer (InkWp style).

*If* I decided to make a document writer in InkWp style , it should support both of text and hand writing notes. Desktop writer will also be available , so that you could sync the doc through DropN900 , and edit on desktop. (Write draft on phone , and create final version on desktop)

The decision will made after FrontView 0.2 released.

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Hello,

thanks for penpen! I love the application, it's very useful.

I would like to know if there is a hidden directory used to store the sketches? Instead of exporting every sketch as png, I consider using a file-sync tool to transfer the sketches to my pc.

Greetings!

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

It is saved in
/home/user/.local/share/data/penpen/sketch.db

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Some days ago I run out of paper to write math exercises after my engineering lessons...
I didn't know where to write, but then I remembered to have pen pen installed on my n900, so I thought: let's give it a try!

Now I'm using it for 5 days and I'm really loving it!!
After hours and hours of sketching, I wrote some suggestions about something you could improve :D

1) Import sketch from png: the first time I used penpen I wrote something like 10 pages of math exercizes. I couldn't find "save" in the main menu, so i exported it as png file. I didn't know that if you tap on backspace it automatically save your sketch in a db :(
So, now I can't edit it any more!

2) The toolbar: I think that just two arrows on the toolbar should be fine. I only use ↓ and → to increase the workspace. Then is much more easy to use the move button.

3) The colour selector: this app is made to take sketch very quickly, but the colour selector is very slow! I think it would be very faster if you could open a palette of default colors (that you can edit with the actual color selector).

4) Tools: it would be great if you could add a tools button on the toolbar that allows you to insert simple geometric shapes like circles, rectangles, lines and arrows or plain text (with the keyboard).

5) Shape recognition: another very useful feature could be the shape recognition! I think there are a lot of algorithm you could use :)

This is one of my exercise sheet:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/8...abilitcap5.png

Thank you for your work :D

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

What about combined sketch/text notes? That's what i was looking for..

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Thanks!
ha... Becoz I hate "save" in mobile app , so It is designed to save automatically. (But undo is not implemented yet)

Although It can't import from png , you could change the background to that png. Then you could draw again on it and export again.

Menu -> Background -> From Device

I got same request from other people too.

Shape recognition? Something like draw a circle manually , then correct to a prefect circle?

It is very very amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Nice idea and implementation, but the 3.5" screen is way too small for math with my handwriting. I can barely fit two lines in 2 screens :D
Something simple I wrote: http://hosted.laasonen.net/attachment-6N03TV.png

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

Benlau.. I want to say I am also a big fan of your app... I use it almost in most meeting to jot down quickly, then use this as reference to send minutes.. even to track wife's grocery list :) Thank you very much... sorry for being months late in wishing after using ur app..

in resistive screens, the n900 is best.. I hate the current capacitve screen except for casual surfing

Is it possible you can release a new version with features ale152 had listed. . plus many more.. we all wait eagerly..

trust me with CSSU firmware update.. My N900 is gettin younger :)

Thanks in advance

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

The undo (ctrl+z) is another feature that would be very useful!

But, if I set my previous png as bg, that already have a bg, then I loose the previous bg for the next pages...

Exactly :D
Adobe Flash has that feature.

Some today random sketches by a friend of mine:
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/995/andreaf.png

Re: [Announce] PenPen Sketch Book - For quick note taking / painting
 

a small flip book would be awesome :) i used an online flash one on the N900 before but would be so much better as an app. simple onion skinning would be a nice addition to that. anyway im gonna check out this app now :) thanks in advance.