MS OneNote on Max2?

[Jmirko]

My company uses MS Office365, and I would love to be able to use OneNote to take handwritten notes linked directly to meetings in Outlook.

Could someone with a Max 2 please try if the handwriting experience in OneNote is acceptable?

I would really appreciate it.

[sogaiu]

I just gave it a try. The start up was a bit slow and there is quite a bit of lag when writing. I would not consider this acceptable.

For reference, the bundled Note app for Max 2 is the only app I've had a good experience regarding writing on the Max 2 -- I tried a number of other apps and they are all much laggier than the Note app.

May be someone else can give it a try or knows some trick or technique to improve the situation.

[Jmirko]

Thanks sogaiu, that's very helpful.
I have been saving up for the Boox Note with the intention to use handwriting in OneNote. All handwriting apps (except the built-in Note app) are slow on my OB M96, but I thought that was because of the weak hardware + old Android version. Your experiment proves otherwise... Very disappointing, as the built-in Note app lacks the functionality I need. I suppose I should hold off on the purchase.

One tip: you may want to try Lecture Notes. It is a great, full-featured note-taking app, and the only one (other than the built-in Note app) which gave me acceptable results on my M96. It might just be fast enough on the Max 2.

[sogaiu]

I looked for "Lecture Notes" and got a number of hits, but ended up trying "LectureNotes" (Trial Version) by Acadoid Developer. Is that the one you meant?

Unfortunately, though it's responsiveness was possibly a bit better than OneNote, it wasn't nearly as good as the bundled Note app FWIW, I did try both the hardware stylus and software stylus settings and didn't perceive a difference in the results.

Very nice app though! Thanks for mentioning it.

I really hope a firmware upgrade can address this stylus-has-poor-responsiveness-in-non-bundled-apps situtation. If that happens, I'd definitely consider this app you suggested, possibly along with the associated apps.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by sogaiu

this stylus-has-poor-responsiveness-in-non-bundled-apps situtation

Just to note that you can easily inject the Onyx SDK in any APK, I have done it many times in the past and published here the distributable (by licence) updated files.
If it is a matter of integration, the packages can be patched.
This said, I do not know what is the (lower level) problem with these applications, I never tried any.

[sogaiu]

Originally Posted by mdp

Just to note that you can easily inject the Onyx SDK in any APK, I have done it many times in the past and published here the distributable (by licence) updated files.
If it is a matter of integration, the packages can be patched.

This sounds very interesting. I didn't succeed in finding relevant posts -- I searched for "inject sdk" and "inject". Any hints?

This said, I do not know what is the (lower level) problem with these applications, I never tried any.

On a related note, some relevant cables arrived today so I was able to test a USB mouse with the Max 2 (BTW, an ethernet USB adapter worked too - a bit flaky at times, but I did see a web page via wired ethernet).

I tested the aforementioned LectureNotes with the USB pointer and noticed that as soon as the left button is held down and one drags, one can see the stroke / line shows up on the screen. This is in contrast to using the stylus where the stroke / line shows up significantly later.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by sogaiu

This sounds very interesting. I didn't succeed in finding relevant posts -- I searched for "inject sdk" and "inject". Any hints

Sorry for the delay, I am in mobility.
The reference is to apktools.
For example, I injected the Onyx SDK package in the bVNC APK to call the method there to refresh the screen, when one taps on a screen corner at the app.
If you check the "monitor" thread, I gave some detail there after request.

In this case, if the Onyx SDK contains facilitators to scribble (it does, in general, but I do not know if it is relevant to the note taking apps mentioned here and around), they can be added to the original code. But I understand that "pen" (slow) and "tap down / left mouse down" (fast) are not the same thing, for some reason, so of course the problematic node is clear.

[Jmirko]

Originally Posted by sogaiu

I looked for "Lecture Notes" and got a number of hits, but ended up trying "LectureNotes" (Trial Version) by Acadoid Developer. Is that the one you meant?

Unfortunately, though it's responsiveness was possibly a bit better than OneNote, it wasn't nearly as good as the bundled Note app FWIW, I did try both the hardware stylus and software stylus settings and didn't perceive a difference in the results.

Very nice app though! Thanks for mentioning it.

I really hope a firmware upgrade can address this stylus-has-poor-responsiveness-in-non-bundled-apps situtation. If that happens, I'd definitely consider this app you suggested, possibly along with the associated apps.

Yes, that's the one. I tried dozens of note-taking apps before selecting LectureNotes, and used it daily for a while. It was the only full-featured app I found that would produce acceptable lag on the OB M96. The developer is also very responsive, he implemented several changes on my request.
I am very disappointed that performance of the best note-taking apps on the much stronger hardware is still lackluster. Does this mean the problem is with the OS?

[mdp]

Originally Posted by Jmirko

Yes, that's the one. I tried dozens of note-taking apps before selecting LectureNotes, and used it daily for a while. It was the only full-featured app I found that would produce acceptable lag on the OB M96. The developer is also very responsive, he implemented several changes on my request.
I am very disappointed that performance of the best note-taking apps on the much stronger hardware is still lackluster. Does this mean the problem is with the OS?

It is reported that for some reason "tap" and "pen" are not the same. Maybe the developer can figure this oddness out?

[sogaiu]

Originally Posted by mdp

Sorry for the delay, I am in mobility.
The reference is to apktools.
For example, I injected the Onyx SDK package in the bVNC APK to call the method there to refresh the screen, when one taps on a screen corner at the app.
If you check the "monitor" thread, I gave some detail there after request.

Thanks -- these are what turned up -- do they look like what you had in mind?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=83
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=109

On a related note, didn't know about bVNC -- looks great!

[mdp]

Originally Posted by sogaiu

Thanks -- these are what turned up -- do they look like what you had in mind?
[...]
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=109

Yes, the second you posted is where I explained the modifications.

Originally Posted by sogaiu

On a related note, didn't know about bVNC -- looks great!

It is ; )

On a related note, I asked some time ago for the APK of Onyx's 'Monitor', because I wanted to try to enhance it:
-- other than A2 modes;
-- tap on corner to refresh etc.

[sogaiu]

Thanks.

After some minor yak-shaving, had some success in building some apks provided via:

https://github.com/onyx-intl/OnyxAndroidSample

Not using Android Studio and just doing "./gradlew assembleDebug" from the command line seemed to be fine.

One of the resulting apks was sample(-debug).apk, which contains some pen and stylus related activities. These seemed to work fine on the Max 2.

May be if relevant developers of note-taking apps were pointed at some relevant sample code something decent might result

[mdp]

Originally Posted by sogaiu

One of the resulting apks was

Excellent (one-command compilation),
now in that APK, like in all from Onyx, you will find something like .../com/onyx/...
which contains the SDK and all the methods you can call from other software (notably: refresh screen, change EPD mode, scribble methods etc.).
You just copy that in the filesystem of the receiving decoded APK (make your calls in the guest application smali, repackage).

Originally Posted by sogaiu

May be if relevant developers of note-taking apps were pointed at some relevant sample code something decent might result

Not all of them will be interested in embedding an SDK (start with one, end up embedding the drivers for dot matrix printers...). But they will probably be interested in fixing with conditionals their software to make it work on more products (e.g., as this "mouse vs pen" issue is fully identified).

[sogaiu]

Thanks for the additional hints.

For the moment, I've gone over some of the sample code from Onyx to try to wrap my head around how things are supposed to work.

I pruned some of their example code to produce a minimal working example and I performed some minor modifications to SimpleMobileTools' Draw app (see github or f-droid) with some success. This was the source code modifying route, but perhaps I'll try to learn about the method you suggested as well as it appears to have wider applicability.

On a side note, in testing I investigated the issue of the eraser on the stylus not working. At least according to logcat, the callbacks related to the eraser don't appear to be called.

For reference, the following document and sample code mentioned therein were quite helpful:

https://github.com/onyx-intl/OnyxAnd...nyx-Pen-SDK.md

[mdp]

Originally Posted by sogaiu

Thanks for the additional hints.

For the moment, I've gone over some of the sample code from Onyx to try to wrap my head around how things are supposed to work.

I pruned some of their example code to produce a minimal working example and I performed some minor modifications to SimpleMobileTools' Draw app (see github or f-droid) with some success. This was the source code modifying route, but perhaps I'll try to learn about the method you suggested as well as it appears to have wider applicability.

On a side note, in testing I investigated the issue of the eraser on the stylus not working. At least according to logcat, the callbacks related to the eraser don't appear to be called.

For reference, the following document and sample code mentioned therein were quite helpful:

https://github.com/onyx-intl/OnyxAnd...nyx-Pen-SDK.md

That's excellent,
and by the way I see that the documentation has improved (or maybe I was checking a dfferent repository).

I see by the way at https://github.com/onyx-intl/OnyxAnd...reen-Update.md
that the main choices for the EPD mode are not only "Normal (Greyscale Update)" and "A2", but also Regal. Got to try how it works in different contexts.