Yoga Active Pen 2 vs XDP15 experience

So, as the title suggests, its all about using wacom enabled pen and a convertible with Xara Designer Pro. Lenovo Yoga 320, in my case.

A backstory is that i wanted to go seriously mobile with a small powerful touchscreen and also eliminate an extra weight of a wacom tablet. Screen drawing with a lightweight pen seemed like a perfect alternative. This post is about how it has turned out.

So, first of all, the pen (latest version of it, i deem, native Lenovo Active Pen 2) works, like, ok. The tip does not glide that smoothly touching the screen plastic, and it has an AAAA (like, what the hell is four A?) battery plus two super tiny separate batteries for bluetooth, but its fine. Its hovering, its very precise, it has pressure and even tilt, thou i might be mistaken with the latter (Xara suppots none, anyways). The pen works amazingly in Photoshop and quite decent in Inkscape. Nothing goes wrong. It's Xara where it becomes a semi-painful experience :(

First of all, pressure is just beyond any logic. If i need a hand-drawn line about 2pt thick i need a 200pt setting to draw it with pressure enabled. The program seems to believe i'm not pressing hard enough (harder would penetrate the screen, thou). If there is any way to tune up Xara pressure interpretation, i'm so so glad for any clues. Thats something active pen specific, it has not ever happened with regular wacom pens anytime before.

Secondly, it's this shift-control thing. Seems like Wacom driver is intercepting some of the keyboard keys to process them in its own way. In most programs, the only difference you'd notice is a Cntrl of Shift badge next to a pointer while the modifier key is pressed down and the pen is touching the screen (or tablet, in case of a regular wacom). In Xara it would often make the program lose the modifier completely (it seems that Xara also has its own way to process those keys and they are not best friends with Wacom driver). I've been facing this problem for years with any wacom tablet i had but it would only come up once in a while and go away after reboot. So, not too frustrating.

But it's persistent with the Active Pen. It's always there. I use my finger instead to multiple select with SHIFT key cos once i touch the screen with a pen instead the SHIFT badge appears and Xara starts ignoring the modifier completely. Using touchpad or finger touch is a workaround but solving the problem completely would be just awesome. Not being able to control and shift select with a pen is making working on projects so much slower :(

In general, it feels like Xara is not really cool with active pen. It crashes more often, etc. PS is fine. Inkscape is great. But Xara's unfrendliness with wacom has kind of come to the high point after the introduction of touchscreen convertibles. It's sad. It's frustrating. But lets hope for future fixes.

It's still just cool to have a 1.2 kilo laptop that is screen-drawable. No more need for a tablet, no more dreaming of cuintiq. As after (someday in the futur) Xara starts working just fine with screen pens, it'll be a blast.

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and it has an AAAA (like, what the hell is four A?) battery

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snaller than a AAA [as you might expect]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAAA_battery


ok you are using wacom drivers to drive a non-wacom pen on a non-wacom device, ie Lenovo Yoga 320 - right?

so you might expect some issues along the way

if you are using wacom drivers then if you were using a wacom tablet/pen you would be able to use the wacom pressure sensitivity settings - but I'm guessing that you can't because no wacom tablet is connected - that may be the root cause of your pressure issue with xara - xara does not have any settings of its own, it will rely on the wacom drivers in their 'normal' configuration [wheras other programs may be more 'flexible']

it might be the root cause of your other issue too, I don't know I have non of these problems using wacom cintiq with xara

it would be nice if xara incorporated a pure vector pen like inkscapes calligraphy pen - this was asked for years ago, but in the current climate of xara mostly offering web features and fluff I am not going to hold my breath

pity

The battery was in the pack so sure it's a smaller AAA version just what the hell and how do I buy a replacement somewhere in Indonesia or where do I travel next. Could be just unreal.

Well I do believe it IS a wacom pen, at least that's what's stated. I don't trust an idea that wacom drivers could drive anything else but wacom. But I'll look into the pressure settings of the pen app, true.

Installing a wacom tablet and trying to tweak anything in general settings might be a workaround too (rather not, but let's check it out first)

Inkscape rocks in terms of pen, yeah. I wonder why Xara is still soo poor with wacom stuff, who works without it nowadays? Meh.

there are lots of sellers of AAAA batteries, including rechargable, on amazon uk... how much help that is to you in indonesia I am not sure, but if you cannot get them locally you may get them shipped from abroad, subject to any transportation regulations/restrictions

Sorry I am confused - you said the pen is a Lenovo Active Pen 2, are you also saying you think this is a wacom pen? or have I mis-understood?

Look at the quick guide Steve https://download.lenovo.com/consumer...2.0_201705.pdf

thanks Hans - well if you are using the wacom app for this pen then maybe it will have pressure sensitive settings... never used one [obviously] so I can't say - wacom drivers for wacom cintiq/intuos do is all I can say

[digging around it seems a Lenovo Active Pen 2 is a 'Wacom ActiveES Gen 13 pen']

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Originally Posted by handrawn

there are lots of sellers of AAAA batteries, including rechargable, on amazon uk... how much help that is to you in indonesia I am not sure, but if you cannot get them locally you may get them shipped from abroad, subject to any transportation regulations/restrictions

Sorry I am confused - you said the pen is a Lenovo Active Pen 2, are you also saying you think this is a wacom pen? or have I mis-understood?

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I'm not in Indoneisa now but well its a travelbook)))

L's AP 2 is a wacom enabled stuff, AFAIK, at least whatever driver it uses looks feels and even bugs 100% like wacom. And i guess i saw a w-word in its official description.

Does look familiar, doesnt it? =)

Attachment 121700 Attachment 121701

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Originally Posted by handrawn

thanks Hans - well if you are using the wacom app for this pen then maybe it will have pressure sensitive settings... never used one [obviously] so I can't say - wacom drivers for wacom cintiq/intuos do is all I can say

[digging around it seems a Lenovo Active Pen 2 is a 'Wacom ActiveES Gen 13 pen']

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It does, ive just tweaked it up to 100% and now the lines stopped being invisible, but its still inadequate as hell((

Wacom ActiveES Gen 13 pen—thanx i ll google that name out maybe something pops up =)

so, this thread http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/thre...-levels.71414/ suggests there are like number of pens compatible, including modern bamboo pens, which means that probably trying different vendors might lead to finding a more xara-compatible driver pack.

of maybe (just maybe) xara will make a better support of this hardware standard, since its now, like, everywhere. i deem its quite new, but i might be mistaken. whatever)

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Originally Posted by joesla

Does look familiar, doesnt it? =)

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These are the settings for the wacom cintiq - tip feel and customise:



Attachment 121711Attachment 121712

So, what i did is download wacom win app. There is (surprise!) a link to it from the list of drivers on lenovo website. It did stay there is some missing stuff over there required to run the app, i've installed it and voila... Something did change. The pressure issue is not that bad now. Rather, still bad but bearable. Everything else remains the same but this alone is some improvement.