What is it good for? All UMPC and Tablet PC users are used to annotate stuff by pen. It's extremely efficient to point out where to focus on, for screenshots, documenting pics (of boken stuff / crashes / etc), and for extremely basic drawing. Last week, I missed it maybe 5-8 times. Next week, I'll miss it a lot more often, maybe 50-100 times, and hence will use 2 other program (that have other massive downsides, and even the combination sucks, so XnView has to fill the gaps).
My wishes: Simple (no need to be searchable etc) free line drawing tool with selectable color & width, optional shadow (with selectable color) - this guarantees to keep it readable on all backgrounds. As must have to be of value: Has to be fluent, so not too demanding for the CPU. Optional / nice to have: Setting alpha (=>use as "text marker"), slight smoothing/anti-aliasing (no "staircase" look) and ability to store drawing in a front layer (=>may be moved around, may be removed later on in GIMP or the like).
Invocation shall be possible by hotkey and button; in full screen mode, there shall be hotkey and hot area or "mouse" gesture (so it's usable for slate mode where no keyboard AND no taskbar (for starting the software keyboard) is available); gesture and painting has to disable "go to next picture" of mouse click (easy to deterimine as button is not released during gesture and when it's released, gesture is already recognized). Icon may depict a pen. Mouse courser may be very similar to pipette (colour information) but it has to have a very fine head (elswise 1px drawing will always be misplaced).
Why shall it be in XnView / why not use another software?
- As XnView is used to show images and I might need to encircle or draw an arrow something in an image that's difficult to point at by finger, e.g. one tiny thing in a myriad of clones, or a pattern.
- As XnView can do most tricks I need for my screenshots etc, except that I need to use another program just to draw that bloody arrow. Not the most efficient workflow...
- As several other programs suck (GIMP, Acrobat etc demand too much of my Pentium M so I can't "write" fluently enough, MS Snipping Tool can't crop, several screen shot tools try to create straight lines (great while painting characters!
), can't save in the target image format I want, ...) where XnView is traditionally great, but they have pen input, however limited, but have.As I told: I'd use it several times a week and even on my desktop (arrows can be drawn by mouse quite good). /Georg
Hi Georg !
KR