I have a graphics tablet & pen connected to my Win10 laptop. I can’t see a way to be able to draw directly in textmaker. Kinda like Windows Ink.
Am I missing something, or is this not supported?
Textmaker??? Are you sure you’re addressing the right site? This one is dedicated to LibreOffice which has components: Writer (document processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation), Draw (drawing app), Math (math formula editor) and Base (database frontend).
I too have a graphics tablet & pen. With a “standard” driver, the tablet replaces the mouse. Drawing can be done in graphics apps like LO Draw or GIMP.
It is primiraily a matter of driver (you didn’t mention your OS name; assuming it is Window$, because of “Windows Ink”) and “accepting” application.
Whoops - yes, I meant Writer.
I can use the tablet & pen as a mouse just fine, but can’t draw directly on the page with it. Of course I could go to another app and daw there, but the ability to do it directly would be handy.
This is not how Writer is intended to be used. Writer is meant to manage text. Everything else (images, drawings, …) must be added through controlled procedures so that text is not hampered. These procedures are based on the notion of frames isolating contents from text. Even if you can manipulate frame contents, this is very limited. All you can do is changed attributes of “objects” and move “objects”. Writer provides a courtesy feature called Drawing objects where elementary shapes are not contained in a frame. Consequently, they can’t be controlled easily: every shape must be defined, positioned and anchored individually. It quickly becomes a nightmare.
This is the best solution because you build a composite object and you insert it as a whole into Writer, eventually assigning a frame style to it, thus managing simultaneously all objects styled the same.
This would turn Writer into a general graphics application. Do you think it is reasonable? What impact qould this have on Writer stability? On text processing specification?
IMHO the biggest issue would be interaction with text (wrap mode, anchor, position, text flow, …). A pen allows you to create a shape made of not connected bits. How would you tell Writer this is a single object?