WinTab versus Windows Ink

Overview

There are two conversations to be had:

• Which API you as a normal user should be using in the tablet driver and in your applications

• Which API you as a developer should use to create a pen-aware application on windows

For normal users

By default I recommend you use Windows Ink unless something forces you to use WinTab. And if you use WinTab I suggest you only use it for a specific application.

Remember that in windows you have to configure windows ink in the driver AND in the application. These have to match settings. More here: Windows Ink

For developers

Wacom published a page with frequently asked questions about WinTab:

https://developer-support.wacom.com/hc/en-us/articles/12844524637975-Wintab (archive)

Here's a small snippet of the relevant section of the doc

Please read the document for the full details.

My developer perspective

But here are a few things that stand out to me:

• It is a well understood and stable API

• There are wrappers or many languages (C#, Rust, Python) that let you talk to the APIs.

  • I had a relatively simple time incorporating it into my test drawing app called WinTabPainter.

• You can find many projects that use WinTab

• It has been difficult for me to find clear examples of how to use the Windows Ink API. Most of the code is heavily focused on the inking features - which is great but not on what I need which is a way to get the pen position, pressure, tilt data, etc.

So at the moment, I intend to continue to use WinTab until I find an easy way to consume the Windows Ink APIs.