Tablet PC - Ink integration (eg Signature)

[seanc]

Hi All,

I recently got myself a Tablet PC, and being a Filemaker fan, one of the things I was hoping for was the ability to enter data directly into fielmaker using the pen. Did a search on these forums and it seems that many people have been trying to workout a way to do the same thing, usually so they can enter signatures in.

As far as I could tell, no one came up with a good answer, and this surprises me seeing as the answer turned out to be fairly easy (at least in theory).

First off, you need to have the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC installed (free from Microsoft, although you probably also need to have office installed).

Here it is, the way it works for me:

- Create a container field for you signature.

- In browse mode, enter the container field

- On the Insert menu, select object

- From the list presented select Ink Drawing and Writing, then click OK.

- A window will pop up for you to sign in!

- Click out of the ink window when finished (or close it).

- Done!

Obviously you should be able to set up scripts to drop you straight in the field and insert or edit the object.

I have found one problem with this though, and its a pretty major issue.

Filemaker on my machine crashes, regularly, after you say insert or edit the text and before the ink window comes up. CPU shoots to 100% and nothing happens. The file needs to be recovered after crashing too. A pity, because otherwise this is pretty close to perfect. Hopefully its just on my machine, and I'd appreciate any other Tablet-ers letting me know!

Cheers,

Sean.

[Kurt Knippel]

I would LOVE to hear more from people using TabletPCs with Filemaker. We are looking into deploying these for field inspection personel but need to real world inplementation stories to decide if we wanna go further or not.

[Charles Delfs]

I have a fujitsu point 510 ( only a 100 mhz) but run FMP via a wireless link and connect to a huge db. it works fine, the only delay I notice is when a large graphic is displayed in a layout.

As for ink capture I don't do any. Gunna give that MicroSloth tablet stuff a try though.

Charles