Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Xournal on Archos 9 running Joli OS 1.2

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One of the main benefits to choosing a tablet over a netbook are the options for touching or using a pen on the screen to write and draw. While the resistive touch screen of the Archos 9 is not as responsive to finger touches as newer capacitive screens, it does work very well with a plastic tipped stylus. The writing experience is not as smooth as an active digitizer, but it's still easier for handwriting than capacitive only screens.

While Joli OS itself doesn’t come with many tablet and stylus friendly applications, there are some good alternatives in the linux world. Since Joli OS is built on Ubuntu, you have access to the Ubuntu repositories through the Synaptic package manager. From Synaptic, you can search for and install Xournal.

Local Settings > Other Settings > System > Synaptic Package Manager

Or the short version in the terminal (Alt+F1)

sudo apt-get install xournal

While the inking is not quite as smooth as OneNote running under windows 7, it works. Xournal offers several pen sizes and colors as well as several highlighter options. Perhaps one of the most useful features is the ability to annotate a PDF and then export it again as a PDF. Write or draw on PDFs or start clean with a lined or blank template. Best of all, both the OS and the program are free.

2 comments:

  1. Hi!!
    How did you manage to do the touchscreen work.
    I diddn't succed and have a joliOS1.2 installed with eGalaxTouch but no device detected

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  2. You're probably missing the kernel parameter. You have add an option to the kernel and a line to rc.local. See the tutorial for more instructions (it's for 1.1, but should work with a clean 1.2): http://violajack.blogspot.com/2011/02/jolicloud-11-install-on-archos-9.html

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