I will be receiving a Gateway convertible tablet soon, and need a way of reading files written on it (using journal and One note). I am looking to see if there is a way for a Linux system to read those files without having to export them to pdf. What I really want is some kind of program for dealing with them. What I need is a way of viewing them (like journal viewer (wine doesn't seem to be very capable of running installers, and journal viewer would likely complain that I'm not running a very good version of windows!)) And if nothing exists, how can I program something?
This is for a tablet that will be my only Windows box, and mainly used as a fancy scratch pad.
(Or, if not this, can anyone figure out how to make a Canon pixma ip900 work on linux?)

Printer:
http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer...cgi?make=Canon
There dosn't seem to be a listing for the ip900 - ip950 is listed as a paperweight.

It would appear the only way to get this working in linux would be to run a windows virtual machine... of course, you could experiment with the close relatives: maybe the ip1000 driver will do something, and then all you have to do is rewrite it to fit

Windows journal is only available for windows tablet pc users - you can export to xhtml as well as pdf or even tiff images (the MS suggested approach). I note that winXP has a reader for native journal files. However, it would appear there may be a proprietary barrier to reading these files outside windows.

The same would appear to be the case for other handwriting style apps.

Since you have a compelling reason to keep windows on this machine, it would appear pointless to suggest converting the tablet to linux.

I did find gnu gournal and a java-based jarnal... which present more portable alternatives.

Sorry, got it wrong. ip1500.

I've actually been thinking of migrating and dual-booting and the tablet and a laptop. I don't really need Windows for the stuff. Mepis should work almost out of the box.

And the ip1500 mostly works through the Canon driver.
thanks.

Yup - ip1500 driver ain't in the foomatics package, and is listed as "mostly" works.

There's endless HW that works well or best under linux, some of us just keep getting stuck with the stuff that dosn't.

Runing the tablet off linux will be a nice experience, and there are plenty of open source apps to do what you are needing.