A visitor to my Tablet UML Web site asks:

What's the big deal with allowing this [i.e., Tablet UML] to run with a mouse and keyboard?

Sure it would be great if I had a Tablet PC to get the full benefit, but in the mean time, you can still recognize my mouse drawings (as if I had drawn them with a pen) and convert them into models.

That's a very interesting question: if the pen substitutes for the mouse, why doesn't Tablet PC software work without a Tablet PC? It's an interesting question, because it gets to the heart of what is often not understood about the Tablet PC. So I'm reproducing my answer here.

Tablet UML is written with the Tablet PC API. Until Microsoft merges that into the mainline OS (rumored to be around 2007), it will only run on Tablet PCs.

I've thought about replacing the Tablet API calls; but they do so much of the work for me. It would be like starting over again, on a very much larger project. If you study the Tablet API, you'll find that it is very much more than just a pen that acts like a mouse. The Tablet API does 90% of the recognition work for me, and then I just have to UML meaning to what it recognizes. Without that capability, I would have to write all that recognition code myself, which would be far more work than I can handle.

As I've written before: a Tablet PC is more than just a laptop with a pen.

And if you want to learn more about why a Tablet PC is more than just a laptop with a pen, and if you want to write your own great Tablet PC applications, then I have to recommend our Tablet PC Programming BootCamp in Boston.