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Pens and ink

You can draw on the canvas and on any item in MultiTaction Canvus. Ink drawn on an item belongs to that item and moves and scales with it. Ink drawn on empty canvas belongs to the canvas. Ink is saved with the canvas, so everyone working on it sees it.

Draw on the canvas

  1. Open the finger menu and tap Drawing mode.
  2. Tap a colour in the ring. Drag the thickness selector to set the line width.
  3. Draw with a pen.

The ring also holds the eraser and the lasso selection tool. See Selection for the lasso.

On a touch screen without pens, turn on third-party touch mode so that fingers can draw. See Third-party touch screens.

Draw on an item

  1. Tap the item to activate it.
  2. Tap the pen button in its sidebar. A panel opens with the eraser, the colour swatches and a stroke width slider.
  3. Pick a colour and width, then draw on the item.

On a note that has no ink colour chosen yet, the pen starts in a colour that contrasts with the note, the inverse of the note colour. On other items the pen starts with a pen colour from the canvas palette, never the eraser. If the palette is empty, the pen starts red. (From Canvus 26.10.2.)

One pen setting or one per item

Pen settings belong to your workspace. They are not shared with other people.

  • By default, each item keeps its own pen colour and width. Changing the pen on one note does not change it on another.
  • With third-party touch enabled, one pen setting applies to the whole workspace.
  • During a presentation, one pen setting applies to the whole workspace.

Erase

You can erase ink in any of these ways:

  • Pick the eraser in the Drawing mode ring or in an item's pen panel, then rub over the ink. In an item's pen panel, the stroke width slider sets the eraser size while the eraser is selected.
  • Use an eraser card. By default, Codice cards 612 and 614 act as erasers. See Eraser cards.
  • On a third-party touch screen, switch to eraser mode.

The eraser also removes ink from notes placed on a PDF. (From Canvus 26.06.)

To remove a lot of ink at once, select it with the lasso and use the delete button in the selection's title bar. See Selection.

Pen size with a mouse wheel

In pen or eraser mode, turning the mouse wheel makes the pen or eraser larger or smaller. In finger mode, the wheel zooms instead.

Colour palettes

From Canvus 26.06, each canvas has its own pen palette and note palette. The palettes are saved with the canvas, so everyone working on it sees the same colours.

  • Edit the pen palette. Open an item's pen panel and tap the edit button. You can add, change, delete and drag to reorder colours. Pens are always fully opaque.
  • Edit the note palette. See Notes.
  • Connectors always use the pen palette. When you edit the pen palette, the connector colours change with it.
  • Reset to defaults. Open Settings > Canvas > Reset colours and tap Reset to server defaults, then tap again to confirm. Canvus resets the pen, note and connector palettes of this canvas to the defaults of the server that hosts it.

Editing and resetting palettes needs edit access to the canvas. The edit button and Reset colours do not appear on a canvas you can only view.

Default palettes for new canvases

New shared canvases take their palettes from the Canvus Server configuration. See the Canvus Server documentation.

New local canvases take their palettes from the client. Set them in Settings > Client > Default colours, or in mt-canvus.ini as comma-separated hex colours:

[canvas]
; Pen colours for new local canvases (example values).
; default-pen-color-presets=#e53935,#1e88e5,#43a047,#fdd835,#000000

; Note colours for new local canvases (example values).
; default-note-background-color-presets=#fff59d,#ffcc80,#a5d6a7,#90caf9

Canvus ignores entries that are not valid colours. Changes apply to canvases created after the next restart of Canvus. When the setting is empty, Canvus uses its built-in palette.

Third-party touch screens

Canvus normally tells pens and fingers apart: pens draw and fingers move content. On a touch screen that cannot do this, an administrator enables third-party touch mode with third-party-touch=true in the [hardware] section of mt-canvus.ini. See Enable touch mode selector.

With third-party touch enabled:

  • A touch mode selector stays on screen with three buttons: finger (move items, tap buttons, browse), pen (draw) and eraser (erase).
  • The same three buttons sit in the centre of the finger menu.
  • After a period without use, the selector returns to its home position and to finger mode. Set the delay and position in the [touch-mode-selector] section.
  • One pen setting applies to the whole workspace, as described above.