Tablet drawing in Word: color?

[amd.ledgem]

Greetings all,

I was directed here from the Apple forums. The issue is that I'm
trying to be able to do free-form drawings (such as drawing a graph or
writing a molecular structure) and I'd like to be able to use
different colors. Ramblings and previously attempted solutions are
written below:

I'm a student, and I'm using a Wacom Bamboo tablet in conjunction with
my laptop and Word 2008. I do not want to use the tablet for drawing
and handwriting - I type much faster than I write (and it's a lot
clearer), so this "hybrid" system works much better for me than a
paper notebook or a tablet PC. Currently I'm using the "Ink" (Inkwell)
InkPad, drawing in there, and then hitting the Send button to get it
into Word. I take my notes using the bulletpoint formatting, and the
image shows up on its own bullet - this works fantastically, but the
InkPad doesn't seem to allow me to change colors. Extensive Googling
on the issue hasn't brought up anything about being able to change
colors, either. Does anyone have any ideas?

In the past, I used a generic tablet from eBay with a Windows XP
system. The tablet came with a plug-in for Word that allowed me to
draw directly in Word by activating the plug-in. Although I could
change colors, this was less easy to work with as the drawing space
was the Word page area (somewhat limited), and inserting the finished
image tended to mess up the formattings. The image would appear at the
end/beginning of the page, or the previous page.

I do have a Windows Vista virtual machine that I can use for this
purpose, as well. I know this is the Mac Office group, but if anyone
knows of any solutions on the Vista side, I'd be up for trying them. I
briefly attempted to use it in Vista and couldn't even find out how to
enter free-form scribbles into Word - everything seems focused purely
on handwriting recognition. I attempted to use OneNote, which does
allow you to freely scribble and doesn't even require the selection of
a pen tool before you begin scribbling. However, OneNote doesn't seem
to be as friendly to keyboard-based entry as Word is. It also doesn't
help that there's no OneNote for Mac (for now), which could make
viewing my notes outside of the virtual machine a bit more difficult.

Thanks in advance for any advice or tips you can offer. I have sent
feedback to Apple requesting color to be added into Ink; I'd request
that anyone else desiring this feature do so as well, possibly at the
<a href="http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html">Mac OS X feedback
page</a>.

 

[amd.ledgem]

As a follow-up to this, there is a potential solution on the Mac side.
While there is no version of OneNote for the Mac as of yet, putting
Microsoft Word into the "notebook" view provides limited OneNote-like
functionality. Note that this view does not exist in Word on Windows
as of version 2007.

A potential downside of this view compared to what I was doing before
is that the drawings can be made anywhere on the page, but whether the
drawing is its own object or something outside of the object is up to
the program's discretion (the same as in OneNote). This becomes a
problem if, for example, you draw the X and Y axes of a graph and then
attempt to write in the labels. Most of the time, I find that both
OneNote and Word on Mac attempt to make the labels their own objects.
This is problematic if you are in a rush (as one usually is during a
live lecture) and need to move the images around.

Another potential issue is that Word does not recognize when the
tablet is being used instead of the mouse. In order to be able to draw
(using either the tablet or the mouse), you must click on the pen
tool. Colors and line thickness can be changed here (pressure
sensitivity does not work in Word, based on what I've seen), but the
pen must be activated and deactivated. By comparison, the Inkpad
solution seems to recognize when the tablet is being used for input
instead of the mouse.

To conclude, I'd say that I've found a solution to the colors issue,
but the tradeoffs are a bit too inconvenient compared with what Inkpad
offers. Unless I find myself in a situation where I need colors very
badly, I will continue to work as I have been, and hope that Apple
will add the option to change ink colors in Inkpad in the near future.