Mac and Trackpad Writing

[bluetortilla]

I'm hooked on trackpad writing. After a decade or so of declining ability to write characters by hand, the trackpad is helping me get back up to snuff.

On the iPhone the trackpad is fine, as you just select like any other keyboard layout. But on the Mac it is far more cumbersome. To use it, and leave it, there are keyboard shortcuts but it's not so easy to jump around keyboard layouts. Also there doesn't seem to be a hide it when it's disengaged- it just sits there butt ugly on the screen.

Does anyone know of another more better way, like trackpad writing that works like any other Mac input layout?

Thanks

[roddy]

Not a direct answer, but have you looked at getting a handwriting tablet + stylus to sit next to the computer. Much nicer experience and the motor memory is a lot more transferable to pen and paper. Look at Wacom products, for example, lots of people swear by them for Skritter.

[rezaf]

I don't think there is anything easier to use than trackpad. However I use stylus on my trackpad when I need to write long texts as writing by finger is not comfortable and my index finger always starts to hurt after sometime.

[bluetortilla]

Don't think you can use a stylus with a Mac trackpad. Anyway I discovered that you can set key combinations to hide/engage it so it works like a champ now. CNTRL SHIFT SPACE BAR

The trackpad that Apple sells separately for Macs is huge compared to the tiny one in the laptops and useful for lots of things besides writing characters, though that's great too for my purposes.

[icebear]

Inklet is a plugin that modifies the trackpad settings to work better with a stylus for drawing pictures in applications, or writing characters. I found it to work very well when I used it (for about a year before getting an iPad).

http://tenonedesign.com/inklet.php