Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Logos 4 on a Windows 8 Tablet PC

A while ago, I wrote a few observations about using Logos 4 on an XP Tablet PC and a stylus. I've recently upgraded my Tablet PC to Windows 8.

Windows 8 has modified the way it supports stylus input. Gone is the floating Tablet Input Panel (TIP) that appears when the stylus hovers over any text input area on a page. Instead it waits for the user to activate it by tapping the keyboard icon in the app bar area at the bottom of the screen. It is always docked at the bottom. In portrait mode the keyboard takes up half the screen.
This new panel works largely the same as the original TIP.  Except... there are new gestures for editing and correcting mistakes. Highlighting a word makes it appear in the TIP. Tapping it in the TIP presents the word in letter by letter mode. Letters can be changed by writing an top of an existing letter. Letters and words can be deleted with a single horizontal line. A space can be inserted by drawing a vertical line to the left or right of a letter. Groups of letters can be conjoined by drawing a curved line, like a rope bridge between them.

The HWR accuracy is better. Probably about 5% -10% better than the XP system. And the XP system was pretty good. I got about 90% accuracy with it. Windows 8 is even better.

Otherwise interacting with the Logos 4 interface is much the same. Tapping on any screen element is equivalent to a mouse tap, tapping and holding for a second until a smell circle appears around the contact point and then removing the stylus is equivalent to a right mouse click.
Logos has written a couple of Windows 8 apps that support the live tiles on the Start Screen. The first app is free and provides a " verse of the day".  The second app is also free. It provides access to a few bible and commentaries if one isn't already a Logos user with a website account. If one is a signed up user then the app will allow any resource already purchased to be download for viewing with the app. A bit redundant if one owns and uses all these resources in the full Logos Windows desktop  application.

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Handwritten on an X-Series ThinkPad Tablet

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