Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Linux, Xournal and Jarnal - on a Tablet?

A customer is wanting to run their software application on an ultramobile or tablet PC. No problem, I say, these devices can run any software that a standard Windows desktop or laptop.

Says they: We want to run Linux!

Says I: Linux? On a Tablet PC?

Says they: And we need notetaking as well.

Hmmmmmmm...

Actually, I already had some experience with other customers wanting to run Linux on a Tablet PC and I knew that it could be done. TabletKiosk even makes openSUSE Linux an operating system choice for their tablet PCs. But I didn't know of any notetaking software that would provide functionality similar to Windows Journal.

Enter Xournal and Jarnal. These open source software applications have features similar to those provided in Windows Journal but are designed for the Linux operating system. I am exploring the Jarnal program because they say it is better than PDF Annotator - I'll let you know.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi John Hill,

Thanks for your interest in using Linux on Tablets.
I run Ubuntu 7.10 on a Toshiba M200 tablet. I use Xournal as my notetaking app, but I build it from source for the newest patches instead of going through the distros. I spend about 20-30 hours per week using Xournal alone. I prefer Xournal to Jarnal for the following reasons:
(1) toolbar is more functional
(2) strokes are smoother
(3) requires less memory???

Most recent builds include patches for shape recognition and resizing. Hopefully Xournal will have a patch for paste from clipboard, or at least an include image (but not as background). I also came across a patch to convert scanned handwritten notes in image format to xoj, that can be edited as if they were created in Xournal. (see http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=163434&atid=827735 ). For a sample of how I use Xournal, see http://cortex.utsa.edu/~crissy/

I look forward to seeing your future posts on the subject!

Crissy