[MartinH]

I'm using a Galaxy S8+ with the pen to annotate my scores. I think the intended behaviour is that any time the pen touches the screen, it should start annotating with the active tool, but I have two cases where that doesn't happen.

In the first case, if I'm in view mode and touch the screen with the pen, MS switches to annotate mode as soon as the pen is close enough to bring up the cursor, then starts drawing when the pen touches the screen (as I expect). However, if my palm is touching the screen when I bring the pen close, the cursor appears, but MS doesn't go into annotate mode. When the pen finally touches the screen, it goes to annotate mode, but doesn't draw anything on the first stroke.

In the second case, I'm already in annotate mode. If I haven't touched the screen in a while (seems to be around 30 seconds), then start by placing my palm before touching the screen with the pen, the first stroke sometimes doesn't draw anything. It's not every time, but probably 70%. And if I don't place my palm, the first stroke always draws correctly.

[Zubersoft]

Take a look at this forum post: https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...11101.html

There is little I can do about this unfortunately, as it's built into the OS. As far as the second issue, I'm guessing it may be something similar with the pen recognition going to sleep if no input has been received for a certain period of time. I'll have to see if that happens on any of my tablets.

Mike

[MartinH]

I was using MS recently during a rehearsal, and found that the pen often didn't work on the first stroke, even when I was already in Edit mode and there wasn't any long pause between my edits. After a bit more testing, I found more cases that seems to make the first stroke fail:
- during a two-finger resize
- when a one-finger drag happens, then a second touch is detected, stopping the drag (maybe this is also considered a two-finger resize)

The second case sounds convoluted, but it seems to happen a lot during normal use. When I place my palm, one part touches first and triggers a move, then the rest of my palm touches, stopping the move, then the next stroke is ignored.

[Zubersoft]

That is true that any drawing will be canceled if a two finger zoom or pan is detected. That's necessary though, at least when stylus mode is disabled, to prevent accidental drawing while trying to zoom. If you uncheck the option to allow touch input with stylus mode, then you'd never encounter that problem, so that's something to consider. I implemented a fix for a similar issue here (https://www.zubersoft.com/mobilesheets/f...11292.html) which may fix what you are experiencing though.

Mike

[MartinH]

i have both Stylus Mode and Enable Touch Input in Stylus Mode enabled. 

I checked the other thread (random lines), and I guess that bug happened without Stylus Mode enabled? 

When doing a one- or two-finger gesture, as soon as the stylus approaches the screen the touch gesture is stopped, which is what I'd expect. But if it was a one-finger gesture the stylus will write. If it was two-finger, it won't. Though strangely, if I lift my fingers, the screen will scroll away as if the stylus gesture is acting as scrolling.

I know in another thread (stylus doesn't work if the palm is placed before entering annotate mode) you mentioned you can't always get the messages needed to go everything correctly, so maybe that's the case here, but I guess I'd hope any stylus touches would result in annotations.

[Zubersoft]

The simplest solution is probably to disable touch input while stylus mode is active, and you can just switch to the panning tool if you need to zoom or pan with your fingers. I'm not sure if there is much I can do about the unusual behavior that occurs when mixing touch input with stylus input on the newer Samsung tablets. It all seems to work much better on my older Samsung Tab S4 compared to the S8 Ultra, for example.

Mike