What's new

Not understanding the pen

lhauser

Active Member
I've had my SP3 since September and have rarely used the pen. What little I have, using the handwriting panel in combination with OneNote 2013 worked pretty well. I've used it hardly at all while working with the Windows 10 Technical Preview.

Now I've upgraded to Win10, and the handwriting panel is different. There's no button to accept the input, beyond acknowledging the autocorrect suggestion or the Enter button. And I can't seem to select a place on the page where I want my input to start. Finally, for every pen stroke I make on the screen, I can see the little lines and boxes the system is using to (I think) help recognize the letters. This happens in both OneNote 2013 and OneNote MUI. I have re-paired, then uninstalled the drivers and re-installed. No change.

Inking works fine, but I have a weekend workshop coming up in October and inking is not what I want to do.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this just part of Windows 10 that isn't quite right on the Surface yet? Is there a comprehensive source of information on using the pen and the handwriting panel that I've missed somewhere?
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
Pen is working as designed....it does the OCR on the fly and will insert at pause...use the space key and continue inking without leaving the panel....
 
OP
lhauser

lhauser

Active Member
Of course...the space key! Thanks! (I haven't seen it inserting on pause, but perhaps I'm not being patient enough).

But what about positioning the cursor on the screen? If I need to reposition the mark for some reason, I can't find a way to place it anywhere. If I touch the screen with the pen, it makes an ink mark but nothing more. Much of the time after trying to position the mark on the screen, I'm writing in a far-away spot or, some of the time, nowhere at all.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
OneNote is a native inking program.... you would need to use you finger to bring up the keyboard and switch to pen input or perhaps disable native inking...
 
OP
lhauser

lhauser

Active Member
OK... it just doesn't seem to match my experience with it in 8.1, but as I said, I didn't use it much and it was months ago, so I might be misremembering. I'll have to see if I can adapt to that, or look at other software for taking notes with the pen.

Thanks for the replies!
 
Top