[Feature Request] Notes App: Change the color / thickness of selected ink

As always, because this is a software suggestion, it applies to all devices, not just the Note series.

The Problem

It’s not an uncommon occurance to be halfway through a lecture and realize your notes are all in the wrong color. This is super frustrating, because the current workaround is to just erase everything, select the correct color, and rewrite / redraw it. This is unnaceptable, especially mid-lecture, when you’re already racing to write things down.

The Solution

Many writing and drawing apps allow users to select ink and change its properties. Along with stretching, shrinking, and copying, these apps allow the user to change the ink’s color, or thickness. So, it seems natural to implement this behavior in the Notes App.

To my understanding, the notes app uses touchpoint data to record which direction an inkstroke flows, and some smoothing to render the line. So, it should be possible to throw a few more pixels around the lines in the selection of the intended color as an easy solution for line thickness modification, since it should be easy to determine where the edges of the line are, and where the line is going (from touchpoint and stroke data within selected region).

However, a more robust implementation would basically simulate the job of rewriting everything, but using the current data of how things look. this way, the touchpoint and stroke data are used to re-render the strokes within the selected region, but with the user’s desired preferences, rather than the one being used now. Here’s a quick mock-up of how this would work:

  1. The user selects some ink, and selects a different color/width than what is being used in that ink
  2. The touchpoint and stroke data within the region selected is copied so it can be preserved
  3. The ink within the selected region is deleted, including the original touchpoint and stroke data.
  4. The copied touchpoint and stroke data are rendered onto the page with the user’s modified color / thickness, as if the user just rewrote everything
3 Likes

Since the lines seems to be vectors stored in a proprietary db file, this should be possible. This is actually a reasonable feature request and I hope that they will take this into consideration in the future, but first they must focus on the basics and should fix current bugs and issues.

To be honest, this is the reason why I stopped asking for feature requests and created one comprehensive list of all major issues to have these resolved first. I have a lot of ideas like yours, but I will wait a little.

1 Like

I am currently working on my own note application for the Onyx boox devices (specifically the Max 3 since that is what I have). I spent a significant amount of time over the holidays messing around with the SDKs and have something that is close to an alpha state. From my tinkering, I know that everything you asked for is definitely possible, and relatively straight-forward to do. If Onyx doesn’t do it first, I will be releasing an app that contains the features you mentioned, as well as a few other QoL features that I see as beneficial.

Unfortunately, being back to work is going to slow down my development time for this app, but once I have it in a decent state, I’ll reach out and send you a link to try it out. I saw your other feature request thread about the pen button too, which sounds like a good idea, and should also be straightforward to implement. If you have any more ideas, let me know. I’ll not throw everything in at once, but work on perfecting features before adding new ones.

6 Likes

I’d be interested in testing out what you have as well, if possible.

Cool stuff! Definitely send it my way if you’re comfortable! I’ve really not had as much time as I’d like to play around with Onyx development. I have a gitlab and github, if you’re comfortable sharing any code repositories with me. I can’t garuntee I’ll contribute, but I’d at least appreciate being able to see how other people set things up in their projects. Any experience is good experience! :smile:

1 Like

Oh guys! WTH!! I’m sad and happy at the same time… I’m searching for people to work with to develop apps specifically made for our devices.

Join me/us here and let me know who you are (I’ll add you App Developer role) https://discord.gg/MJsjcKJ

Thank you for your understanding here. Yes, our team is working on the serious bugs and basic feature first. Then they will move on to other features.

Well noted with thanks. Will forward this new feature to our R&D team to follow up and evaluate.