[OSM-talk] Using digital tablet for drawing maps

[David Earl]

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=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1264415098&sr=8-1
> <http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Touch-Small-Tablet/dp/B002OOWC3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1264415098&sr=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