AutoCAD has more in common with TYPO3 than one would think.

The papyrus based CMS

As a true Mac addict I was glued to the screen with popcorn at my side during the live text-report from Macworld at macrumorslive.com a few weeks ago in January. My biggest dream was for Apple to announce a notebook which lets you write on the screen. Why? Because it is extremely impractical if not impossible to take notes at math and physics lectures with a keyboard – just think of graphs, special characters and small arrows drawn across multiple blackboards. So, what you want is to just do it all on paper. Somehow that just feels so old fashioned and even if I must admit that papernotes are probably quicker to flip through and search visually, there is just something compelling about having it on the laptop. However, no such promise was given by Mr. Jobs, so that night I began to search on Google for what methods others might have developped in that field. Short of confirming that pen and paper are the way for maths and physics, I stumbled upon a clue to look for a digital pen! After some hours of reading and looking at options I decided to buy the Paperium Starter Kit [3]. Two days later DHL delivered a package from Austria with the pen and notebook. It turned out that the commercial software in the bundle is based on various Open Source products – something which did not surprise me since I received a personal reply from the shop owner stating „...and thanks for starting TYPO3...“ Funny – in school nobody knows about my history with TYPO3, but when I buy something in an Austrian webshop I am famous :-)

So what is this pen? Well, it is basically the input device of a paper based CMS! The pen writes with real ink on the notebook pages. The special notebook has a tiny pattern of dots printed on it which at the same time is read by a tiny camera in the pen. The camera decodes the pattern to know its XY-position on the paper. The movements with the pen are converted into vector graphics. So during a lecture I can take notes in a completely natural way without a computer. At a later stage, I can transfer the notes to my laptop with no effort. On my laptop I can tag and order pages giving me convenient and instant access to my notes. It feels very natural and smooth.

Note-taking the old fashioned way thanks to the digital pen.

What I will do now is to test this in the upcoming classes and then tell you if it really worked as a tool for studying or if it only “worked on paper” :-) All of you students out there can then decide if it is worth it's 200+ Euro.

That's all for now, see you soon in the snow!

Der Autor

Als TYPO3-Gründer und Präsident der TYPO3 Association leitet Kasper Skårhøj die Aufgaben der T3A zusammen mit anderen aktiven Mitgliedern. In seiner Freizeit raucht Kasper Zigarren und renoviert sein Haus. Er lebt mit seiner Frau Rie und seiner kleinen Tochter Amelie in Kopenhagen, Dänemark.