I'm using a Bamboo Pen (Small) and I'm experiencing some technical issues that have a real negative impact on the fluidity of my practice. I'm wondering if they're an issue on my end or on Skritter's, and, if they're Skritter issues, if they're being worked on:

First, short strokes - drops and such often fail to register. It seems if my pen is moving when it hits the board, it doesn't register until about a half-centimeter into the stroke. I don't have this problem as much when using the pen in art programs such as MS Paint or GIMP. Because of this issue, I can only write short strokes if I slow down my stroke or lengthen it considerably, both of which hamper my study.

Second, user-strokes that turn back on themselves - Often, my stylus moves backwards as I lift it from the board at the end of a stroke, and this almost always causes the stroke to fail. Aside from changing the way I write, is there a way to adjust the stroke-recognition to disregard this tiny deviation and accept the stroke?

Thanks for any help. I love the program already, but I wouldn't mind seeing some of these technical wrinkles get ironed out to improve the overall experience and effectiveness.

Hey fat,
I'm using a 7" touchscreen and no problems along those lines. Only thing for me is that it often doesn't recognise the hooks like the bottom right of 门.

The first bit is a problem with the Wacom settings on your PC. The important thing is to turn off flicks (I think this is the term used - at any rate they allow navigation and other actions through certain pen gestures). It'll be great once you disable it.

Hmmm I have the exact same wacom and I dont have any of those problems, I am using OS/X though.

Oh yeah; I forgot to post this, but I finally wrote up a guide to Wacom settings, and found which ones are the culprits. It's not just flicks; it's also double click distance.

https://www.skritter.com/wacoms/settings

For the wobble at the beginning and end of strokes: there actually is code written to deal with this, from way back when I was just dreaming this up. But most of the strokes don't have enough anti-wobble tuned in, since when we were tuning the recognizers, we didn't have very many Wacom strokes in there. I can try increasing it some on some of these strokes when I do tuning. You can also try adjusting the tip feel and how you write to reduce wobble.

Hmm... Everything's up to those standards... I have the newest drivers (direct from Wacom, newer than included in the box), flicks have been off, just set double click distance to minimum, Pen tracking, and I've tried all tip feel settings, but no improvement in Skritter - short strokes are at least as bad as before - I even tried it with maximum double-click distance in case there was a mistake in your guide...

Incidentally, the tablet came with ArtRage 2.5 - when I do a quick stroke on it, I get a weird loop at the beginning of the stroke, just a few milliseconds worth, but a really fast stroke can cause a fair-sized loop in this way. This doesn't occur in GIMP or MS Paint, but it only occurs when I use the tablet in ArtRage, not the mouse, so it could be a telling symptom...

The only other thing that mucks up stroke recognition is if my computer is being particularly slow.

What browser are you using? Try Chrome...

Did you try disabling press and hold?

You can check if it's just Flash running slowly by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F to see the FPS display: if it's dropping well below 40 a lot, then that could be it. But it still sounds like tablet settings to me.

aaah yes, I also use chrome, not sure if it would make a difference but chrome does seem to be significantly faster.

I have already been using Chrome for Skritter, and while I have considered that it might be a computer performance issue, my CPU usage gadget rarely reports over 20-25% usage while using Skritter, so I don't think it's very likely.

Here's how it looks when I run into this issue - the pen strikes the tablet and the cursor moves along. If I lift the pen soon enough after contact begins, it shows the ripple effect where I lifted it and no stroke occurs. If the pen stays on the board long enough, the stroke-in-progress ink appears where the first contact occurred, which indicates to me that the pen's contact with the tablet is properly recognized, there's just a delay in reporting it.

Is it possible that I'm simply writing the 'dian' strokes too fast for the tablet even with minimum double-click distance? I've been studying characters for about two years (though not nearly as effectively as I can do with Skritter managing what I study, hence my interest in it), so I tend to write characters and individual strokes more quickly than the average new Skritter user is likely to.

No, the minimum double click distance should be so tiny as to not impede writing. I still think the settings described haven't been properly applied (maybe something needs to get reset by a reboot?), but it could be that I've missed a setting that I didn't think was important. Please play around with the settings some more and report back if any of them made a difference. Also try disabling the ripple effect.

If by ripple you mean that moving circle, make sure your right click is set up to be something non intrusive.

Nick's right, it's definitely to do with your settings.

@nick - not that it matters too much, but you might want to specify that those instructions are for fairly recent tablets. I have an older tablet (a Graphire) and the control panel has almost none of the things you mention.

James

Ah, I missed the Press and Hold part of the settings page =\. Yes, it's much better now, thanks everyone for your help.

I have a Graphire too, James. I think it's which OS you have and not which tablet model, perhaps. The extra Control Panel entry is just in Windows 7 (maybe Vista?).

Glad it's working, FatDragon! It can be a really pain to configure them with such bad defaults.

@nick I'm running XP and I do have a Control Panel entry "Wacom Tablet Properties". It has completely different options than what you're describing. Maybe it's a version thing.

James

A couple days later, I can't believe how much better this is - I can write much more naturally and fluidly now. Additionally, this has made a huge difference in the stroke recognition - I don't have to wait around for strokes to register, so I get my pen up quickly and avoid any unsightly wobble. Definitely a huge step forward for my Skritter experience. Now if only it could cook and clean...