Expresii On A US$150 Windows Tablet: Calligraphy (Pt 2)

中國書法，歷史悠久。電腦時代，何從適配？最近一批廉價 Windows平板電腦湧現，再配以 Expresii Lite 軟件系統，一個真正便攜又廉價的數位書法方案便誕生了！

Authentic Digital Chinese Calligraphy!  真。數位書法不是夢！

[Continuing from last blog entry]  We first try the original stylus included in the  PiPO W5    package. We found that it's not as easy to control as the other styli from Hanvon that we have. Check out the test video below. We keep getting bad strokes due to the less-than-ideal pressure control and the friction of the stylus tip against the screen. Fortunately, using the other styli that we have, we get better control and are able to get some nice results. 
[續上回] 感覺  PiPO W5   原來的筆，筆壓操控沒那麼好：輕壓力容易劃不到線，壓重一點又很容易變得太粗。換了一支大一點的漢王筆，這筆比起wacom intuos 的筆要硬，但在這塊 W5上用卻發揮剛好。W5  本身驅動沒有如 Wacom 自帶的壓感輕重調控，日後如加入這樣的軟體調控，望可有幫助。

The small stylus is the one included in the W5 package. The bigger stylus is from an old Hanvon graphics tablet.

Below is another session with the larger stylus. Notice how organic the strokes are! These styli do not support tilt angle sensing, but the resultant strokes are not bad.  We of course still want tilt sensing (available in high-end graphics tablets) for best results. :)  Tablet makers, are you listening? 這些筆都沒有斜度感應，筆劃還好，但當然我們還是想要斜度感應的，書法嘛，就是要以筆的操控來畫出美的線條啊～

Below shows yet another session with the large stylus. The Atom Bay Trail used here is a very low-power CPU. Because of that, we cannot make very fast strokes without jaggedness. However, we are still very impressed by Intel's advances in their GPU-integrated CPU's. As you can see from the videos, zooming in to see stroke details is no problem, although it's not the smoothest experience like we have on desktops. To appreciate the advances, be informed that the 4 year-old TabletPC HP Touchsmart TM2 gives a mixed performance gain/loss compared to the Pipo W5 (table below) but is actually more than 5 times heavier!

Performance Comparison running Expresii Lite: 
                                      TM2      W5
Start-up           18            13      sec.
Stroking           65       49      FPS
Idle                     200*  110     FPS
Zoom Pan        20      75      FPS
* The max FPS is capped to 200.

Potentially the W5 can give better performance, as the CPU boost rarely pushes it to the maximum of 1.8GHz (ref.: the last video below). 

In the last video below, we show again a comparison of the original W5 stylus and another Hanvon stylus. You can literally hear the sound of friction as we get a broken line in this video. Maybe a matte screen protector can solve the problem? 除了壓感，原w5的筆還有摩擦問題啊，換一張屏幕保護膜可解決嗎？

In conclusion, we now have a very good candidate for an education tablet for school students. These Windows tablet are easy to carry, certainly much cheaper then an iPad, and are capable of running millions of .EXE applications already exist in the Windows ecosystem - be it content-creation or office applications, for examples. Android tablets can compete in terms of prices, but are quite limited in terms of applications. Professionals would probably opt for more capable (and more expensive) Windows tablets which are also available now. And, you know, if you still need to use some Android applications, you can always try an Android emulator like DuOS-M (paid) or  Droid4X  (free).

結論：學校如果要為學生配平板電腦供教學用途，這樣的Windows平板的確是個不錯的選擇。另，為中華文化傳承，也請各教育機構，認真考慮參與數位書法的發展。

Next blog entry, we will try sketching with the W5.
Finally, we wish you a Merry Christmas and happy painting in 2015!