Hanx-Casting in the Field
(continued on page two)
Post-Post-Script: So. My methodology for working with Hanx Writer in this post was to combine the iPad with my laser printer, a combination that produces a paper output very much in keeping with manually typewritten text. One could perhaps argue that black & white, carbon-based xerox toner is more archival than typewriter ribbon ink, if that lends any credibility to the process. I would have preferred using my usual yellow/green engineer's paper, but I have not yet tested running individual sheets of it through my HP printer. And too, the engineer's paper is three-hole-punched, which would interrupt individual words, since there's no provision for formatting or margin adjustments when printing straight from the iPad to my HP laser printer. One quickly thought of work-around might be to type an artificially wide margin on the left side, by adding a padding of blank spaces at the beginning of each new line, something I'll have to test, first.
Bonus points if you can figure out the subtle connection between the attached photos and the text.
posted by Joe V at 3:37 PM
7 Comments:
This made me hungry!
So did you type directly on the iPad screen? If so, I'm impressed by how much you were able to put out. They are great gadgets, but for writing ... uh-uh.
Richard: Yes, I typed directly on the screen. It helps to have some sort of iPad holder than angles the screen to a convenient position. I've written enough with the iPad's virtual keyboard that it's not too hard. But, as I indicated in the previous blog article, iAWriter's virtual keyboard is superior.
One quick update on my suggestion of padding the left side of each line with blank spaces, as a makeshift margin adjustment. I tried doing this on a test document and, while you can do this on the first line, if you permit the carriage return to happen automatically then it will not allow extra spaces to be inserted to the left of the first character.
I will simply have to find another colored paper to use for this application, as I rather dislike plain white paper for typecasting, as the paper texture is hard to see, as are any correction tape markings, which I feel are essential for the viewer's immersion into the typing experience.
Nice reviews so far. Almost makes me want an iPad. :)
What kind of document does the HANX produce -- PDF or image? I ask this because I sometimes added color to the white scanned JPG pages of my typecasts using PhotoShop's paint bucket tool, and it worked very well (as long as I scanned the JPG in color).
Cameron: Hanx produces PDF outputs. The free version only has a white background, but the $4.95 "Writer's Block" upgrade has a selection of paper color backgrounds and red, black or white ribbon ink colors.
Perhaps with a PDF editor or even in Photoshop, a colored background could be applied after the fact.
Errata: Make that red, black or blue ribbon ink colors. :)
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