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Could a Pen Replace the Keyboard?
theluckman writes "Reuters has this story on how new devices like "digital pens" could possibly replace keyboards as primary data entry devices. Maybe so, but I would need my pen to make cool clicking sounds."
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After all these years of typing, I can write way faster and more accurately with a keyboard than I could with a pen. My handwriting is for shit these days. And I couldn't imagine trying to write code with a pen!
I think all of these latest innovations in handwriting recognition and "Tablet" PCs are basically aimed at an older market that doesn't have typing ability. Handwriting is a step *back* from typing. I would love to be able to use a keyboard to take tests in college, because my hand cramps up so much... simply replacing the paper with a PDA or Tablet is utterly useless to me.
Lessee....
I can type for hours and hours on end, barely stopping to go to the bathroom and drink beverage, and my hands and wrists are none the sorer. I can do a modest 75 wpm at max speeds, even while using all the !@#$%^&*( keys.
or....
I can use the crap entry device, the pen, and write for about an hour before my hand cramps up and do about 15 wpm legibly.
Thanks, but no thanks for this crap invention. Just because its hard to make technologically doesn't make it a good idea. Now, gimme the shunt, and we'll see....
Pens? Come on.
Assertion #1: Its STUPID. Here's why. For one, this article infers that a pen can be faster than a keyboard in terms of its ability to provide data to a machine. Wrong. Data entry via keyboard is upwards of 10x faster than data entry by hand. That number increases with experience. 250 WPM is not uncommon among most commercial secretaries. Hell, I know people who can type faster than they can talk, let alone write. Besides, pens and their ilk are better suited for manipulation of PRE-EXISTING data, not to enter that data in the first place.
Assertion #2: Its pointless. The problem isnt with the data. Its with our ability to organize and present that data. If theres anything we DONT need, its to increase the rate at which data is already generated. We've got so much data floating around, whole new areas of computer science have to be constructed to learn how to best deal with the backlog.
Assertion #3: Its Non-Intuitive. Any 4th grader who's ever had to write out sentences as punishment can tell you how much fun manually enscribing data is. Right now, you simply cannot beat the keyboard in terms of its ability to move data from meat to metal. Unless, of course, you want a pen with a little 101-key QWERTY mounted on the side. For people who have to enter loads of data, youre not just asking for carpal tunnel, you're asking for arthritis and loss of manual dexterity as T increases.
Like I said. Stupid, pointless, and non-intuitive.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Someone else posted that writing wouldn't work for him, and I have the same opinion. Think about speed of writing, speaking, and typing. I for one can type much faster than I can write. Fastest typing: 200wpm (though cowboy neal is said to be able to do 6000 using Nitrocoffee)
Normal speech: Faster than writing, Dragon says about 150wpm
Writing: real slow.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
The article makes it pretty clear that they are not trying to replace keyboards for desk tops.
(Can you imagine? I have people stealing my pens now and it is a pain. This would make it more than an annoyance.)
And in the mobile market, where a keyboard is really not a good solutions-- someone does need to come up w/something that works better.
We really need something driven by thought. That's a ways off so the pen will have to do for now.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Try to write the F word with those things, I kept getting
Ev
Incidentally, I use a trackball that I hacked to have an external box with the mouse buttons so I can operate the trackball with my right foot and the buttons with my left (due to RSI). So I never take my hands off the keyboard. I can't see myself going back to having to use a hand mouse, pen, or whatever as my primary pointing device.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
such devices have existed for years (being used mainly by graphic designers). I even remeber a web designinig book from 1999 that mentioned those kinda things.
Wouldn't this be a step backwards? Every computer literate person I know, types a lot faster, then they could write. I can understand a pen based interface for Pocket PC's and Palms, where space is an issue, but there's really no good substitute for a decent keyboard.
~RaGe
www.outrigged.com
Read the stupid article....
FOCUS ON NEW TYPES OF ELECTRONICS
While analysts said OTM's digital pen could also serve as a replacement for computer mice or laptop touchpads, the company considers these markets to have matured to the point where they are unlikely to gamble on new methods of data entry.
Instead, the sweet spot for digital pens may prove to be an emerging market for smart phones, hybrid devices that are half handheld computer and half mobile phone on steroids.
A replacement for a keyboard? Not on a PC but basically they are moving the character recognition from the PDA to the pen and using it in small devices like phones, PDAs(thopught they already did this), mini puters.....
"Being good human beings, we've adjusted admirably to contraptions such as keyboard and mouse pointing devices," said Charles Golvin, a mobile phone industry analyst with Forrester Research. "But these are very, very poor ways to go about interacting with such machines."
Well, it's not like we evolved with a pen in our hand either! It's just a very, very poor way of interacting with paper. (and as others are pointing out, a poorer way than interacting with paper than say, a typewriter is)
Kurzweil is betting that voice recognition is the future. I don't know, a full day of talking, and an office full of talkers, could get pretty rough after a while, though I suppose they could pretty quickly get into subvocalizations.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Reuters target those who don't type much. Their readers would probably buy into craps like this and feed the hype with more and more VC money. Don't expect to find tech news worth reading in Reuters.
devices like "digital pens" could possibly replace keyboards as primary data entry devices.
Wonderful. I really miss the light pen I had on my Atari 1200xl circa 1986 or so.
--saint
is everyone so damn intent on replacing the keyboard.
rule # 1: if it works, don't fuck with it.
the fact that in the last 3 months, 3 new PDA's have come out the primary feature of which is an integrated keyboard (yopy, zaurus and new sony)
and one of the top accessories for other PDAs is a portable keyboard should be a hint and a half.
voice recognition is useless in a cube farm environment. handwriting sucks (it is slow and painful).
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
After using a Wacom back in school, I have a hard time using the damn mouse anymore. But then again, when one is using the stylus, you always have your left hand on the keyboard, for the most part, to decrease the amount of swishandclick you have to do with the stylus (quickswitching tools in photochop).
So, I don't really see how a stylus could replace the keyboard. I've always had ass handwriting, I was left handed, but my dicksuck of a kindergarten teacher FORCED me to use my right (I still shoot a handgun lefthanded, use chopsticks, swing a baseball bat, et al) to write. My handwriting is so awful that even Graphitti doesn't pick up every letter that I tap into my Palm.
Not to mention that I have a tough time inserting text significantly slower than my speed of thought, which is blazing, and I can almost keep up with the keyboard.
Using a stylus would just impede thought, kind of like typing one handed in a heated AIM flamewar. It just doesn't work.
Fuck. I need to lay off the beers this "early" in the morning...
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
For inputting the english language, i can type far faster than i write, and i believe most people who ultilize computers on a day to day basis can.
However, when I type in japanese, it takes me a lot longer to type the character phonetically and then select the proper character from a list to use. Pen input of complex characters would be signifigantly faster because, assuming the character regonizer is good enough, you wouldnt need to select the character from a list.
The other main advantage of a pen is that you need not lift your hand off the keyboard to reach the mouse to manipulate a GUI. Granted for a "power user" you would have a number of hotkeys/shortcuts handy on the keyboard, but for someone who is already using the pen, its just point and click. Its also easier for someone who is just learning to navigate a computer as it is just like using a mouse.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
As far as handwriting recognition goes, the last Apple Newton was the pinnacle as far as I have tried...
How about better speech recognition instead? Or better yet, eye movement tracking (silent). If I was able to use my monkey-thought input device with something, that would be the best!
There's a reason those Victorian keyboards jammed; people were too fast for them. The faster the keyboards were able to accept data, the faster people learned to type. I know people who can type almost faster than the keyboard even now.
Nobody can learn to write that fast. Sorry, but our hands just don't work that way. And for all the troubles we get with carpal tunnel, I think we all remember that fingers grasping a pen cramp up in no time.
All this is not to say that an improved digital pen is a bad idea; it's not. In many ways, a pen would be more flexible than a mouse and more intuitive. It certainly could replace hitting 'enter' or writing short words on a keyboard, and would be less cumbersome with a handheld.
But replace the keyboard? Shyeah. Me and my 60 wpm say no.
The current issue (Apr '02) of MIT's Technology Review has a couple features on the future of mobile computing. This article goes into the details of mobile computer interface design (from laptops to PDAs to MP3 players). The point is that people prefer to use their fingers to push buttons -- no matter how cool Pen Technology Of The Moment(tm) may be.
The full text online costs about US$5, but for that much you can go to a bookstore and buy the whole issue (ironic, isn't it?).
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
They can take my keyboard...when they pry it out of my cold dead fingers!
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Damn I missed it. Now if only I had a keyboard...
What we REALLY need is an input device that will read out thoughts, just imagine code and it appears... Then again, men have a sexual thought something like every 10 seconds, so perhaps there would be some problems using such a system at work.
...now make really sense :)
0 001 11 1
imagine trying to write beowolf with one of these!
If the stylus had ever been faster and more efficient than those "lowly keyboards not so different from the ones that powered the Smith Coronas and Ollivettis of yesterday," then nobody would have bothered with those Smith Coronas and Ollivettis in the first place.
I'm not sure why the article starts by making fun of the venerable keyboard, since it serves such a different purpose.
Now, if you told me that this laser pen might replace the mouse (which, in fact, the rest of the article seems to do), that would be a different story. It seems to me that a pen could do everything that a mouse can, and, in most respects, do it better.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Your points are very valid, unless you are doing non roman character input for wordprocessing type applications.
Certanly people who speak these languages would code using roman characters(its the standard isn't it?), but if you are writing a paper in your native language I could certianly see it being faster since you don't have to select the proper character from a menu after you have typed it phonetically.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
in the last c't interview, donald knuth said he preferres handwriting to typing and always handwrites the taocp parts befor he types it in because his handwriting speed is the same speed he thinks, but he can type much faster - so he doesn't come along with thinking while he types.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
This is ridiculous, and the article on Reuters reads like a press release not an objective article. About what you expect because it looks like someone's just paid to have it stuck on the wire, but hey, worth remembering that.
:-)
With a pen I'm using three fingers to perform data input, with a keyboard I'm using ten. Far more efficient resource usage, and any character can be made with a simple twitch of no more than two fingers, while I line up the rest of my hand for the next characters.
I can't write anywhere near 100+WPM with any legibility, but I can type at that speed with pretty good accuracy (and I'm not exactly unusual...).
Think back to exams, and 5-10 pages of handwritten text in 2-3 hours. Major cramp problems, which I simply don't get producing way more input than that with a keyboard.
Replace joysticks? Come on guys, I've used a pen on a touchscreen as a joystick replacement before, it's woeful. Replacing eyeball tracking cameras as a data input system? Well, if anyone can come up with an example of someone who's physically capable of gripping a pen but who makes any quantity of input by this method, I'm amazed. Put simply, that claim is extraordinary enough that I demand a reference.
PDAs and phones? Well, most PDAs have touchscreens already so don't need anything this complex unless people want to input text to them by drawing on another surface, which seems to miss the point of a portable device. Phones? Cheap, commodity things with little data input that have to be rugged and survive teenagers? The pen makes them expensive and is going to get lost _really_ quickly. And who needs it, exactly? I mean, with decent predictive text we can already write at a pretty good speed for the length of input.
A pen is nice for drawing, some people like them for GUI use. Personally I like a touchpad which I can use without significantly moving my hands from the keyboard but hey, everyone's different
Someone has had a bright idea and has oversold a story to Reuters, who've published it straight. No problem with that, they're a wire service not a newspaper, but this isn't a credible story. These people aren't going to take over the world and their claims are rubbish.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
So I play RTCW with a mouse. I could imagine holding a pen instead of it. 'd be more accurate and faster.
But have you thought about simultanously pushing 2 buttons over an over again? You'd lose the pros
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I tell you that the keyboard and the three-button mouse has become indispensable! I could not switch to trackballs back when they were making it big, and I could not go to a pen now. I cannot even figure out my handwriting anymore, much less work the stylus for my Palm.
Click here or here.
If i am ever forced to interface with a computer
using a pen, I am doomed. My handwriting is awful.
(I dont mean ugly awful - I mean illegible awful)
As a child, I had questions on assignments and
tests marked wrong because the teacher could not
read my writing. I had to take tests orally at
first, but I later found it more efficient to
type on a computer.
I can't even imagine the problems the blind, or
parapalegics, or many other people would
experience with a pen interface.
Nothing beats a keyboard for computer
accessibility by the disabled.
My handwriting is horrible and slow. Combined the fact that I've been forced to write with my left hand on spiral notebooks on many occasions when I was younger, I've never enjoyed writing with a pen.... Though I'd rather create art with a Wacom Pen/Tablet than a mouse, I don't believe I will ever prefer writing with a pen over a keyboard again. I have memories of sweat forming between my fingers after several hours of use, and getting more severe hand cramps than I ever got by typing... maybe it's because southpaws have to push the pen (digital pens don't usually like this, the tip tends to pop and slide thanks to friction on most surfaces) instead of dragging it. Meanwhile, keyboards are born to be "ambidexterous"....
:)
Of course, that's just my opinion.
If the article didn't suggest that these things could replace the common keyboard as well as the mouse, I'd probably just leave the article alone.
It's worth noting that the myth that keyboard layouts were designed to slow down typing (which they weren't, they were designed to prevent jamming without forcing typists to slow down) will not do the marketing departments for these devices any good if they present it like this article just did.
Imagine, for a moment, that your machine was set up with a silent, eye-reading cursor system. Then, you set about jerking. The jerking gets good, but all of the sudden, as happens every fucking time you troll through the porn listings, you enter that special place that I like to call Popup Hell.
FUCK! you exclaim and frantically dart your eyes about in a vain, feeble attempt to close out all those god damned popups. But more keep coming.
Soon you develop eyestrain, which totally ruins the jerk session.
That, my friend. Is why said technology will never take off
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
I have been legally blind my whole life, writing things on paper was a problem for me, I just coudn't keep up with other kids. So in 1985 I was given typing lessons (good ole IBM electric...) and the next year I got my first personal computer. My productivity went through the roof after I learned how to type, my marks were up and I had neatly typed notes that were easy for me to read. My typing ability coupled with my love for computers ended up culminating into my "dream job"; programmer.
I, for one, could not imagine writing as much as I do without my friend; the QWERTY keyboard.
crazy dynamite monkey
Yeah, I fully agree with all of you, who say, that you are able to type much faster with your keyboard than with a pen! And I think that I would hate computers if I had to use a pen.. For all my writing and coding tasks at least. And for gaming (-; But when I have to quickly make a drawing for anything it would be really useful! It woudl open us the windows to a new kind of painting interaction *ggg* Ciao, Grex
Kinda like the Cue:Cat? Cool, cuz we know how successful THAT was!
So its really just handwriting interpretation for my Wacom tablet. Even if it works better than PDA graffiti, typing is still faster, and a keyboard is already installed on every computer(well almost every one). It looks like this is targeted for those who haven't used a keyboard before. Good luck finding customers .
Keyboard are better, given. BUT, for mobility, they just suck. It would be much easier to push a button on your pen and scribble a text message on the back of your cell phone than txt w/ lot sht-hnd. This can also be practical for automagically transforming notes to your computer. Depending on how much ram is in there you could possibly scribble someone's phone number on your hand without actually using ink. At a meeting you wouldn't have to carry the current bulky electronic clipboards, just your pen and maybe an extra memory stick.
Keyboards will always rock the desktop input world...until we get neural implants. (:
--Roy
The author says:"But users everywhere still work on lowly keyboards not so different from the ones that powered the Smith Coronas and Ollivettis of yesterday" Perhaps the reason people are still using keyboards is that it's a good design that serves it's purpose efficiently, and doesn't need to be modified.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Like most everyone and their monkey has pointed out, this would be useless for coding and so forth. But, man, I would love to be able to input math type stuff with a pen. I managed to hand most of my assignements in university nicely typeset in LaTeX, and I would have to say that a pen interface would have made that less a feat!
I doubt this is the application they were looking for, as mathematicians are a small market, and most worth their salt have secrataries.. umm grad students to do it for them.
If you're really unable to use a keyboard, train your chicken to peck out the letters for you.
Chances are, if you're unable to use a keyboard, you're unable to use a silly pen.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
The only good reason to replace a mouse with a pen, is to get more excersize. the end..
However, I couldn never imagine entering text with it -- it's simply too cumbrous a process to write out text with a pen. Keyboards, even with their limitations, are still the way to go.
I think one-handed chording keyboards would be a more likely replacement.
goats.com: better than
Man would it not be great if there was DNI Direct Neural Interface ala Shadowrun...
Fantasy? Sure but man-o-man.
"Maybe so, but I would need my pen to make cool clicking sounds"
... too bad for you ...
Pens (specifically ball point pens) have been doing that for years.
But I guess you need to know how to write to use them
-Shaunak.
Index cards replace computer databases!
Another example of this is the different between the violin and the piano. While you can certainly produce lots of notes at a high rate on a violin, you're (pretty much) stuck making one at a time. With a piano you can make up to 10 notes at once. You just get a higher throughput - that's what enables a single person to sound more like a symphony by playing a single keyboard. You could never do that with a single violin.
keyboards are great...but only for english and other languages that use the same character set. But when you have to deal with other languages like sanscrit or chinese, most people probably write them faster than they could type.
most character/pen recognition systems kinda suck. But i've heard, and my friend is trying, that a program called atok works pretty well for pen recognition in japanese for the palm pilot.
I think the worst thing about the keyboard/mouse combo is having to move your hand to/from the keyboard. Several companies have integrated a touchpad into the keyboard, but I think a more interesting keyboard concept is to use one hand for mouse, the other for keyboard. They also make software which does the same thing. I tried the deme out, and got close to 30WPM, which makes me think with practice you could probably get speeds around 50 wpm.
And besides, who wants to have to pickup a pen every time for mouse-like movement? The mouse just sits there where I left it, waiting for me to use it again.
max inglis
A pen would be much better! I *love* sticking pens in my cunt to pass the time here at work... Now if only it were a vibrating pen... hmmmm...
Can we chip in and buy Neal Stephenson one of these? It's a little past March 7.
I recently sat down at Barnes and Noble and tried taking down (hand written) notes from a book. I was *shocked* to find, my hands trembeld as I wrote barely legible characters on the paper.
:)
As soon as I got home, I typed out all the stuff I had written and it took me about 1/4th of the time it took me to actually write those notes down !!!
I am not going to a pen anytime soon. Keyboard will remain my choice of data entry.
Damn... I need to get a palm keyboard soon, do to more of this notes taking stuff
http://www.ajaygautam.com
just use a touch screen
jeez, wish computer makers would learn this
why is it so hard to understand this concept.
i see the fucking scrollbar on my screen,
to the very right of this window.. why can't
i just reach out and touch it with this
wonderful pointy thing on the end of my hand.
While I'm a far faster typer than I am a writer, I can see where this might be useful in some situations. If I could plug this into my box on a USB port, and have it "share" with my mouse (ie - move either one, and the mouse pointer reponds), that would actually be useful.
For games, the mouse is still superior - but for graphic work, the fine precision with a pen is still better. Dooling? Pen. Selecting text? Depends - but I think a pen would work better a good chunk of the time. Porn surfing? Um, mouse.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
So tell me again why I should be excited about pen data entry?
I would never want to you use anything but a keyboard or a brain implant for programming. Trying to do all kinds of funny characters and indentation with a pen would get very messy. Have you ever tried to write valid code on your Palm?
one thing i can tell you is you got to be free
It never ceases to amaze me that what is news to some in the computer industry is not news at all to Mac aficianados -- just goes to show what an innovative platform we work on
But seriously, I've been working with a pen interface for going on seven years now. Wacom has always made a brilliant pen interface for the macintosh. Not only are pen interfaces cool because you're so used to them (even if you're attached to your computer, you had to use pens in school) but it's only after a while that you learn all of the shortcuts that pens can use. My current Wacom tablet has a couple of buttons built into the pen -- this along with several hotspots that I've designated on the tablet, there are probably close to thirty commands I can execute (some of them scripts) just by doodling a shape. It's really intuitive.
In fact, Wacom's new tablet incorporates an LCD monitor so now you're not even seperated from the screen but working right on it! I ordered one and can't wait.
You can take a look at it here:
http://www.wacom.com/lcdtablets/index.cfm
The only thing about the article that I really thought was bunk was the fact that they said the pen interface would replace joysticks. Fat chance. I've played Quake with a tablet -- it's impossible.
____________________
STFU!@#!$!%@#* :q!
http://www.slashdot.org
cat file | sed s/word/word2/g > newfile
vim file
Take a few minues and actually write those, how did you do?
Yeah, I threw the pen across the room and tore the paper in half as well..
proton != antielectron
Notice that I said in schools. Not in the rest of the world, please!!!!
Hmm... After thinking about this, I think that the real trends will be three-fold--
;)
1: Better keyboards (One CAN type with Dvorak keyboards faster than one can talk-- Remember that QWERTY kb's were designed to slow typing speed so that manual typewriters would not jam).
2: Pens for compact devices (who wants to carry around/set up a keyboard for a PDA?) amd for some artistic input (light pens have been here for a long time and are much better than other means of drawing input, IMO. Mouse input in a drawing program is too much like etch-a-sketch
3: Voice recognition for general operations (not writing code-- writing code using voice recogniction would probably be slower than using a qwerty kb).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
how the fuck am i gonna play quake with a pen? i can't write that many letters that fast, or at the same time.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
You know what would rock as an input device?
An unobtrusive eye follower. i would replace my mouse with that anyday.
Forget point and shoot, look and shoot.
But replace a keyboard???? no way in hell.
This
I thought "Slashvertisements" were only going to be on
However, it looks like this article is an "slashvertisement" for OTM's Virtual Pen.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
I sent my old Uncle Dave (102 years old) a cheap, simple typewriter so he could write letters. He didn't like it because he says, "It has too many keys!". Maybe this would work for him.
I think that's the more interesting question. Keyboards can handle 100 wpm, and there's no filter between the process of writing a character and the computer interpreting the character. Pen and voice would both need this.
But even assume the computers are so fast that there's no slowdown with that interpretation. Will it ever be easy to manipulate a UI with your voice? Possibly for some things, but about more content-focus software like a word processor? How about if you're writing a manual about how to manipulate a UI? Could you imagine the amount of escape characters at work in your dialog at that point?
And even if that first draft was easy enough to do, how about all subsequent drafts? "Computer, go to line 135 and replace the second occurence of 'there' with 'their', and that's 't - h - e - I - r'." Sounds a little clunky to me...
But I suppose the folks at Dragon et al. have already run into these issues and found solutions for them...
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
AP Wire - All Tier 1 OEMs announce shipment of new digital pens to replace keyboards per MS licensing changes.
CN: Rev. Taco, with all that's happened to us today, I kinda feel like Job.
Taco: Well, aren't you being a tad melodramatic, Ned? Also, I believe Job was right-handed.
CN: But Reverend, I need to know. Is God punishing me?
Taco: Ooh, short answer: "yes" with an "if." Long answer: "no" with a "but."
sig
One of the reasons the Palm Pilot did so well is it was easy to learn and use. You can learn Graffiti in an hour or so, and using it becomes automatic within a couple of days.
A piece of equipment that uses familiar input devices (pens) is poised to gather more customers than a keyboard-based one. It may tick-off the techno literati (the same ones who scoff at AOL's customer's as simpletons) but businesses will continue to look for ways to reach a mass market. AOL, Microsoft, Motorola, et. al. would rather have the customers (and their cash) than slash-dotters' approval.
(Besides, the article points out that pens are targeted at mobile phones and sub-notebook mobile computing devices. On-screen keyboards are uniformely awful, and fold-out ones are simply awkward.)
I want keyboard for entering lots of text and control processes and I want pen for making marks in text and drawing stuff and I want mouse for navigating the screen.
Wouldn't digital pants be much better? I mean, just think of the possibilities!
(mental image of CowboyNeal... digital pants... IRQ conflict)
Yuck, maybe not. Stick to the mouse/keyboard combo thanks.
- Keyboards work...point!
- PDA's get keyboards. I took a Psion Revo Plus because of the keyboard and I know quite some Palm users that have that foldable keyboard
- Speech recognition is not mature at all...and in a loud environment it's close to useless
You're supposed to think before you moderate, you know....tssss....Kids of today...I don't see how I can play Quake III with pen and mouse.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
Optical character recognition of text that's been scanned at optimum conditions (high quality scan of mint, original page of text), is hard enough. Even the best OCR packages available off the shelf are only 98-99% successful in these conditions, and that's for straightforward English text, which has comparitively few characters that are easily distinguishable and with no accents.
Many asian languages have character sets that are orders of magnitude harder to recognise, because there are so many more characters in each set and because there are so many more characters in each set that are similiar (which makes it harder to differentiate between them). A few such languages includes Japanese, Chinese, Hindu and Urdu.
Now recognition of near-perfect type is one thing. Recognition of an individual's pen strokes is another thing altogether.
One of the reasons why the Apple Newton PDA failed so miserably was its promise of usable handwriting recognition. Unfortunately, that promise turned out to be more a case of wishful thinking. Having to rewrite characters many times before the Newton would correctly interpret them was a big turn-off for potential Newton purchasers.
On the other hand, Palm got it right when it went with Grafitti. An easy to learn equivalent character set that emphasised fast and easy entry rather than slow and complex recognition.
I'm sure that there are Grafitti equivalents for many Asian languages (it's hard to imagine that Sony don't have a japanese one for their Clie range) but, again, the large character set problem doesn't disappear (although context sensitive recognition algorithms can help.)
Individual handwriting recognition technology for the masses may still be a pipe dream. Let's face it, we all know people that have trouble reading their own handwriting let alone that of other people! Yet we expect a PC to be able to handle such tasks at a reasonable speed? (60 words per minute is probably something in the order of 240-300 characters per minute.) Frankly, I just don't see it happening yet.
Bottom line: if you want fast, accurate pen recognition then your probably going to have to learn how to write grafitti or a similar.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
That's right. Keyboards are antiquated, but they allow for fast, relatively accurate input. Text to speech is slower and less accurate [for now] but easier. However, imagine a text-to-speech office- the noise would drive productivity down and cases of workplace violence way up.
What we need is the MindReader6000, a wireless input device to translate brainwaves & EEG data into text and interface controls- replacing both the mouse and the keyboard.
Yes, it would be a steep learning curve at first. And yes, the control units would have to be tuned to the individual people using it. But people have to learn to type, too, don't they?
Now, all I have to do is invent the damn thing...
What the fuck is a pen?
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Man, this pen thing just keeps coming back. Does anyone remember back in the late 80's early 90's when pen computing was all the rage. PDA's were new (and large!) and everyone was going to chuck their keyboards from the tallest heights once they experience the joys of pen input. Didn't come true then, won't come true now.
Pen input is fine for certain specific applications (mobile being the obvious), but as a general purpose input device, it sucks.
Same goes for voice, it's fine in specific situations, but as a general purpose input device it is severly lacking (can you imagine an office full of people talking to their computers, ugh).
It's amazing that we haven't been able to figure out a good alternative to the ubiquitous keyboard. Maybe it's one of those inventions that just happen to hit the nail on the head (not that there can't be improvemnts to the basic keyboard, but the general concept).
That might be cool!
No way! This may be the way of the future, but I for one will hold out. I mean really, if you think about it logically using the keyboard you have 9 usuable fingures (not counting the both thumbs, they are pretty much interchangable....). That means that you have nine different "devices" to enter data into the computer. If users were simply more familiar with the keyboard and the shortcuts that are provided for keyboard use there would not be a problem. 9 input devices that allow me to type at anywhere from 60-100 wpm, try doing that with a pen!
Not only would the productivity of users go down, a keyboard sends a code to the computer to tell it what key was pressed, there is no question about it... No pen recognition software or anything crazy like that.
Granted... the mouse and the pen are good things, but nothing beats the keyboard. I just bought a new Zaurus (they rock) and I'll tell you what, anything that I can pull of on the keyboard, I use it. It is WAY more efficient than the stylus (pen concpet)...
My 2 cents...
-ryanFor all my technical knowledge, I'm still a three-finger-and-thumb typist. I don't type all that fast or well. I've also been using a Palm device for about 3 years.
I'd still rather use the keyboard than the stylus. Why? Even with grafiti, the Palm doesn't consistently recognize my scrawl...certainly not as quickly or accurately as my poor typing.
It really doesn't take a really computer literate person to figure out an alphabetic keyboard. You push the 'A' key and an 'a' appears. You push 'Shift' and 'A' and you get an 'A'. Is it really that much more accurate, fast, or intuitive to make a '^' shaped mark on a Palm?
Granted, this is from my POV...YMMV. However, I know what I'm doing on both devices, and I consistently have trouble entering characters via grafiti that I would have no problem getting in via hunt-and-peck on a keyboard.
What is your Slash Rating?
But what about people like me who can type about five times faster then we can write?
I'll have to chain my pen to my desk or PC to stop losing it all the time and prevent others from stealing it when they lose theirs.
What happens when I chew the end ? Do I got a cool buzz like off a 9 volt battery ?
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
My doctor has a "light pen"/digital pen that he uses in place of a mouse. The stupid thing has its 'left-click' as the front of the pen, so you have to push the pen against the monitor to click. Double-clicking is nearly impossible because the monitor is vertical and your hands aren't that steady.
A digital pen that operates horizontally would have a tremendous advantage over current generation light pens. Granted. But it's not a replacement for the keyboard (as everyone here has argued), and it's certainly not a good substitute for the mouse.
It might be useful as a replacement for Waccom tablets for digital artists, but that's about it.
I'd much rather have a fingernail mounted virtual mouse that had its own cursor on screen that tracked my every vertical/horizontal movement, and at the touch of a 'synch cursor' key, snaps the real mouse cursor to the ghost cursor. That way you could type and ignore it, then when you want to use the mouse, don't even move your hand, just wave it in the air and snap the cursor to your position when you're done.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
That sounds like a great idea...at first. I thought I was the cleverest guy on earth when I went to the store a few days after getting my Palm III and got a GoType! keyboard so I could take notes at college.
:} ). However, it was next to useless for statistics (try to format a table of results using the tab key...HAH).
For my comp sci classes it wasn't bad...particularly for code (it was actually readable
Somehow I managed that quarter to get all my notes into the device via the keyboard, without completely using up my RAM. The kicker came at the end of the quarter. I'd put each day's notes in a separate text file, with classes organized as categories. This served a couple purposes. First, there is (was) a limitation on the size of the text file. Second, I could quickly locate notes for a particular day. The unexpected problem at the end of the quarter was how to remove them all from the Palm. It took forever to click the menus to delete them.
What is your Slash Rating?
If you can find a slashdot user that would use a pen over this:y &u=/020 319/168/19xte.html
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor
I'll give you a cookie,
Rob
After so long using the keyboard i'm completely crap with a pen.....
plus you can not play counter-strike aswell...
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
Hmm..I dunno, how would I be able to strafe, change weapons, and jump using this thing...There goes CounterStrike for me.. :-)
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Of course we all know that the QWERTY keyboard was invented to slow down typists who were causing their typewriters to jam up. Keyboards were invented because writing was too slow.
Now with computers we no longer have to worry about metal bits getting jammed, we just have to worry about electronic bits jamming. That doesn't happen too often unless you use Windows 98. (Sorry, had to do it).
So, says Slashdot, what keyboard should we use? Why, an ergonomic Dvorak keyboard of course. The letters are layed out to provide for the fastest of typing if you learn how to use it.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Q: Could a Pen Replace the Keyboard?
A: No.
Perhaps the keyboard is so efficient that it makes it a little too easy to produce a lot of words when one would do. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
One of the reasons why the Apple Newton PDA failed so miserably was its promise of usable handwriting recognition. Unfortunately, that promise turned out to be more a case of wishful thinking.
Heh. Good thing you're not modded up, or you'd be perpetuating this myth- one that is especially blindly spouted here on slashdot.
The first few models of the Newton's HWR sucked. Pretty bad. After a year and a half, Newton OS 2.0 came out, with new HWR recognizers, and it got it right. Far faster input than Graffiti or other character and stroke based methods.
Fortunately, real HWR didn't die with the Newton. ParaGraph's CalliGrapher exists for WinCE, providing a more efficient, real HWR based, means of inputting on a PDA. There is also a version for the Windoze on the desktop called PenOffice. Unfortunately there is no such thing as real HWR for the Mac or Linux platforms though.
Having used both a Newton 2100u and an iPAQ with CalliGrapher, both a Newton and Palm device with Graffiti (originated on the Newton), Jot, the built-in character recognizer in PocketPC, as well as various programmable character recognition means, I've quite a bit of experience with HWR in the real world.
It appears that you don't have experience with much in the way of HWR, except perhaps on a Palm. That's fine, but it isn't very scientific to pull stuff out of your rear without any
experience to back it.
After 3 months of using my Newton and iPAQ (w/ CalliGrapher), I found I can get between 40-60 WPM. That was not counting any words fewer than three characters, so that number may be higher, but I wasn't sure how to determine WPM for sure. That's including making corrections. Around 99% accuracy for words, 90% for punctuation.
I tend to get higher WPMs on the Newton, mostly because the larger screen accomdates more words at a time, and that the recognition is rolling, rather than happening at once when I lift the pen. That is, if I write "hello my name is armondo," it will have recognized as text "hello my name" by the time I am writing the word "armondo."
Individual handwriting recognition technology for the masses may still be a pipe dream.
Try a real HWR system for a while, meaning a month or two. The same amount of time is required to get used to Graffiti, so I think that's fair. During that time, correct it. The real HWR schemes of which I know train a neural net against your corrections, and learn your HWR style over time.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Think of all the buttons you would lose! You would have to buy some sort of gaming interface device to play your games that require more than the buttons that are available on gamepads.
same msg as topic
remember when the spread of pc's was in doubt because no one thought executives would type.
It seems so early 70's. wait it was.
a pen is appealing to little pda where tiny keyboards are not the same as larger keyboards.
this is one area where pens might be appeal.
Problem is the dirty little secret of Pda's is that there little screens will never allow full
use of internet.
You will always need something bigger and with it
a keyboard.
I can barely write my name. I get one of these, I'd better be coding in a language made up entirely of _ - \ and /.
Ugh. Bad idea.
-b
Actually, I thought the Newton had Grafitti built in as a default, but used natural writting as a fall back. I've used them all from the MP100 to an upgraded 2000 (I believe it worked the same as the 2100). I swear I had Grafitti cards that I kept putting on the back of the case, and I don't think they were 3rd party upgrades but licensed into the OS.
Anywho, yes, grafitti is better for fast entry...if you can remember all the symbols and everything else. Alphas aren't too hard, but past that I have a hard time remembering how to get anything without pulling the damn thing out of its case and looking at my cheat sheets on the back of it.
BUT the Newton handwritting was still hard better than people gave it credit for. Its like when a doctor writes you out a prescription and you get the wrong meds because they can't write worth shit, are you going to blame the pharmacist or the doctor (discounting of course that the pharm could simply call the dr if there was confusion). The newton actually forced me to learn to write a little more ledgibly...people complained that it didn't learn, but forced you to learn...no shit. Learn to write ledgibly and you won't have problems. Learn to spell correctly (something I don't do well) and the software will more accurately figgure out what you are trying to say.
Ok, I'm sure there are a few dozen Newton posts like this by now attached to different comments...especially since this device is always knocked by folks that only played with one for 5 minutes...so feel free to mark this as redundant. All I know is I wish I had a Newton the size of my Clie, cause its hard to wear cargo pants to pocket your PDA when you are forced to wear a tie and jacket every day.
clif
I will start out by saying, I'll never switch until I have to. I am far more accurate and faster with a keyboard then I ever will be with a pen. That having been said however, I can understand how this could bring about a new generation of computer users. They will no longer have to take typing in schools, and they will learn pen input from the ground up. I can see where that could have its own set of advantages.
Trying is the First Step to Failing --Homer Simpson
Also a very good article in "The Economist" on the same subject.
The coolest thing about technologies like this is for artists or people that need to draw diagrams. Do you have any idea how much nicer it would be to just draw with a pen than using the mouse or heaven forbid using the keyboard to make diagrams, tables, sketches! Wacom tablets work reasonably well at this, but it's still somewhat awkward. Tech like this could revolutionize art based industries.
Toward the end of the article they talk about the Pen's ability to use any surface.
In reality, it's an optical mouse head on the tip of a pen. It's not your typical pen-based input device.
Granted, this has some cool applications, but makes it very un-pen-like for cursor movement -- you'd be drawing on whatever surface just like you'd be moving a mouse, with no absolute positional control, just delta.
And all this has NOTHING to do with replacing a keyboard. Why did the article keep bringing that up? They didn't mention handwriting recognition at all, which would be the essential component.
Not to mention that keyboards would still be needed for high-speed data entry.
Has someone named this syndrome? The "Wow, this new technology will replace all the current technology, look, isn't it cool?"-syndrome that the mass news media falls into all the time.
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
I don't know anyone that can write as fast as someone types, unless the person typing is a typing newbie.
How about a keyboard like this that can be projected onto any surface.
Or perhaps the senseboard?
I think these are much more plausible than a pen. Perhaps a pen with voice recognition would be faster...
I use a wacom tablet (which uses a pen) to play Unreal Tournament. You can place your shots much more accurately.
Still, for a "thank you," birthday, or other special, personal event, I will almost always hold the handwriten note in higher regard than the quick e-mail. One conveys some effort and care; the other, an afterthought (though I do get a kick out of it).
As for this technology, a company called Anoto is developing a similar technology. The pen is about the size of my larger founts, but a ballpoint (the bid downside). Under the point is a small camera. You write on paper with a special grid patern. The camera records the strokes, and transmits them to another device using bluetooth.
One of their main applciations would be to capture information on filling out a form, then uploading it to an device.
I haven't seen anyone selling it, though some big names are involved: Cross, Pilot, Sanford (who owns rotring, Parker, and Waterman) are providing the pen know-how. Others for the tehcnology, Logitech being one of them.
No teeth marks.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
I have a pentablet, not the one described in the article naturaly, but the ergonmics of it are the same.
:)
The problem with pens is CLICKING. If the pen has buttons on it in addition to a tip, then those buttons are going to be arse end small anyways.
But just pushing down the tip of a pen without moving it off of the icon is a challenge. The pen / pencil form factor was designed for MOVING not for sitting still.
A lot of work went into the design of the mouse so that it could be both moved AND held still. Clicking with a mouse is easy, you have a nice thick base to work with. With a tool with a pen form factor you are basicaly screwed. Yes it can be done, but it is not nice. Double clicking is almost impossible, ugh.
OTM must overcome a legacy of failure for digital pens.
False. Digitabs are VERY popular.
For drawing.
DUH.
They are called digitabs because they are digital tablets. The best out there (to my knowledge) is the Wacom Intuos. Most of their other digitabs are highly over priced, but these babys rock. Of course you have to get the airbrush accessory (another few hundred) to realize their true potential.
Tilt sensoring.
w00t.
Annnyways. They rock. Ok actualy I have never USED one, but everybody else says they rock and they are kind of like a 56" trinitron screen. Yah you cannot even afford to go into a store that showcases them, but damnit, you can still drool just THINKING about them.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Making the oft-made mistake of reading the comments, I've noticed that there is a lot of ignotance in regards to handwriting recognition (HWR).
It seems people equate real HWR with the HWR on the first Newton model, as seen on the Simpsons. That's not the case. After a couple years, when the Newton devices reached the Newton OS 2.0 version, HWR had progressed lightyears. HWR has come a long way in the last 9 years since the original Newton MessagePad.
Fortunately, real HWR didn't die with the Newton. On the downside, it seems that the ParaGraph system is the only provider that exists today, with the same engine (derived from the Newton OS system) in a few implementations.
For desktop Windows, there is PenOffice; for WinCE/PocketPC, there is
CalliGrapher; and MS Transcriber, a free version with the same core as CalliGrapher, but with fewer handy features.
With either CalliGrapher or the Newton, the experience of myself and others is that with 2 months of training the neural net by making corrections brings the accuracy up to 99%+ at 40-60 WPM. I tried to use Graffiti and other character recognition (CR) methods before finding real HWR for longer periods of time with pitiful results.
I have horrible handwriting. The great thing about real HWR is that it's incrementally trainable. A neural net learns your handwriting style better than even programmable stroke-based systems can.
Pure real HWR isn't always the best thing when writing code for languages with an overly complex algol-ish syntax. However, used in tandem with programmable a stroke system or macros within the HWR system, it can work out very well.
For example, a program called PenCommander comes with CalliGrapher for PocketPC. PenCommander allows you to program macros. I like to hack Smalltalk, Scheme, and perl on my iPAQ. Smalltalk and Scheme aren't problems, due to the fact that there's almost no syntax and punctuation, and that the function, method and class names are more word-like.
For perl, I have macros set-up. For example, to create a new sub, I have write the word "sub" and circle it, which expands to:
sub SUB {
my ($x, $y, @z) = @_;
return 0;
}
It's a shame that real HWR is confined to the one implementation by ParaGraph. I imagine this is due, at least in part, to the mythology of the Newton, and the impressions of the first three models. As a result, there is only real HWR for the Newton, WinCE, and desktop Windows. I reccomend you try one out for a few months, if you have a PPC or a tablet-based Windows machine. If there was real HWR for Linux, I could dump WinCE on my iPAQ. The only reasons I use WinCE is for the real HWR- I can't imagine putting up with Jot, Graffiti, xstroke, wavvy, &c again!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I have atrocious handwriting. That's part of the reason I got a Visor and an accompanying keyboard for it. I can input text much more quickly with the keyboard than I can using the stylus and Grafiti. The stylus definitely has it's uses though.
On my computer I really rely on my keyboard and mouse. For the same reasons I relay on the keyboard on my Visor. My handwriting is atrocious. I don't think any company (especially M$) is capable of overcoming this huge obstacle.
I do have a Wacom tablet, one of the cheaper ones with 512 levels of pressure sensitivity. It's useful for some of the Photoshop work I do, but very little else. I can't imagine using a stylus for all of my computer input needs. Seems like a step in the wrong direction to me.
Pooty tweet
Being a chronic Arthritis sufferer I can safely say I find a keyboard a hell of alot easier to use than a pen. From gripping the pen to writing legibly at speed to stress in the hand and wrist, the keyboard beats the pen on all sides for me, esp in prolonged use. Alot of other disabilities benefit greatly from the keyboard too, too many to mention.
Laptop Reviews
There is no way a pen would ever replace the keyboard. I can write about 80wpm with a keyboard. It'll take me a half-hour to fill a page using a pen. Not to mention I can always read my writing when I am typing. How well do you think you could read your writing if you wrote with a pen at 80wpm? I think the idea of new input devices is wonderful; however, pens just aren't going to make the cut. Enough said, I'm sure a thousand people already said the same thing...
http://www.askthevoid.com
That's where you are wrong. OCR might be more difficult, but this is not OCR. That's even a bit of what allows grafitti to work. The whole point is that it's recognition of the drawing of a character.
In those 'harder' languages, the people are very touchy when it comes to writing the language. Each of those complex characters has an exact number of strokes, with the order and even direction exactingly specified. Given all that, recognition of Kanji characters turns out to be much easier than of English characters (just think of how many ways one can draw the lower-case letter 'a').
That's one of the reasons that PDA have been a huge success in Japan. The Sharp Zarus line has been huge over there, due much in part to their successful Kanji recognition.
One could almost argue that grafiti is a success exactly because it applied the order of Asian language writing onto English characters.
Palm has had this for many years, and everyone wants them to move to the thumb keyboard. Why would we want to move our main systems to this?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
This just looks like a miniturized optical mouse fit onto the head of a pin erm... pen.
:) who developed the SmartQuill.
:)
Microsoft already has some experience with this kind of input method (sorry, link to original site is dead) when it got the researcher for BT (formerly British Telecom, as all the news articles say
So, I don't see how this laser pen is going to be any more revolutionary than the smartquill- the smartquill argueably has better accuracy since the laser pen (if it is a glorified optical mouse) cannot tell where the pen has been moved if it's off the "writing" surface, the smartquill doesn't even need a writing surface, and the smartquill could also easily have a cool scrolling display depending on how you tilt the unit.
The smartquill has been in development for over four years and still nothing has become of it- though maybe MS is biding its time for the right platform and application to come along (ie: handwriting recognition on a smartphone- but why would MS want to go into that market?
Well, I see it's time to get picky (though not all the way through)...
A Hindu is someone who practises the religion of Hinduism. Hindi is the main official language of India.
Hindi uses the Devanagari script. Like scores of other Indian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, more...) as well as Tibetan and Khmer, it uses an alphabet derived from the ancient Brahmi alphabet, which, it's true, has many more letters than the latin alphabet due to its combined vowel/consonant variants, but still has a manageable number compared with Chinese or Japanese ideogrammes.
As an aside, Brahmi-related alphabets have an alphabetical order which actually means something: the alphabet is in fact two-dimensional rather than linear and a symbol's position in the grid reflects the tongue and lip positions and/or movements adopted when pronouncing it.
Urdu is fundamentally the same language as Hindi but uses a Perso-Arabic derived script, which means it's not much more complicated to read than English. However, even in its printed form it is very cursive, leading to many combinations of strokes that would probably make machine reading a lot harder.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
I've been using a Wacom pen since I got one free with a draw program. It beats the stuffing out of any mouse or trackball I've ever used and, despite what others have said about video games, it's great for shooting things if your game supports it, which some don't, unfortunately. It's awesome in the shooting range sequence in Bladerunner, for example. Something about 5000 years of practice with a stylus-like device versus how many years with the Xerox Parc mouse? Were they drinking that day or what?
As a replacement for a keyboard, though--that's another story. Might I suggest a one-handed keyboard for the left (or right if you're a lefty) hand and a pen in the right? Or some kind of popup window with a keyboard in it so you can click on the letters with the pen? Two of these, one for each hand, might be interesting to experiment with. How many people are two finger typists anyhow? The neat thing about the all-in-one concept is that it gives you a whole hand full of fingers to use for something else. It's the moving back and forth that makes the current system so stupid.
What saddens me, though, is the lack of imagination on the part of folks who claim to be on the cutting edge of technology. Reminds of my old man complaining about pocket calculators because they led to a decline in arithmatic ability. One can only imagine what the stone cutters said when somebody showed them their first piece of papyrus. I can hear it now: "They can have my chisel when then pry it out of my cold dead hands." And it always was....
SF
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
As a person with disgraphia (the inability to write correctly) this device could be complete torture. Writing for me is both slow and extremely painful. An essay can literally leave me with bleeding fingers. For this reason, I use a computer, instead of a pen. I switched from pencil notes to using a Palm with a keyboard in class, and life is much easier.
Some would say that I just shouldn't buy one of these things, but that might not be good enough. Computer labs, where space is at a premium, might see this as a holy grail.
I type because I cannot write. I see no point in writing so I don't have to type. Please, if you run a computer lab somewhere, remember me and my plight, along with the visually impared and others before you make a decision about keyboards, screen resolutions, or anything else.
-twb
Kids coming out of schools will soon all have better typing skills than writing skills - there's no reason to make all new equipment use pens and slow down input to computers. Even a crappy typist that types 30wpm cant match that with a pen, not for extended periods of time. I can type for hours with no problem, but I remember writing exams being quite painful.
We need increased speed of input devices to computers, not pens.
Hell, we should be criticizing the keyboard for its short-sighted 'one key at a time' input and go to a chord system which some people have gotten up to 200wpm on on custom versions.
And there's no reason to have a pen when keyboards
can now be projected onto a surface according to a recent slashdot article....
One of my pet dalliances is internationalization, and I've finally got an editor where I can put in text from multiple character sets. However, entering in Chinese is a VERY slow process (guess where to find the character, pick it out of a line up, double click), whereas with a pen, one could enter in several dozen characters per minute...
What is the difference between this pen and a light pen? I remember someone made an inexpensive light pen for the Commodore 64 almost fifteen years ago (I think it was sold with Koala Painter?). They never seemed to become popular for home use. Why would it be more popular now?
I always thought it was neat but the resolution at the time was a little coarse and few programs were developed to take advantage of it. Is this why they are rare or is the demand simply too low?
Maybe its not that big an issue, but I know that myself and everyone else who has suffered through 2 hour long essay tests finds that their writing hand is in a great deal of pain. I don't have this problem with a decent keyboard.
:,;,.,,
Also there's another issue I hav't seen mentioned. Unless the pen functions as a mouse as well, you will either have to learn to use a mouse with your off hand or switch back and forth.
If it doubles as a mouse, would that mean you'd be tapping the pen against something non stop while playing quake? That would require a lot more muscle movement than a mouse finger click. It kind of reminds me of when everyone thought touch screens would be a great idea until they discovered Gorilla Arm.
How do you tell the difference between characters like this:
", ', |, l, 1, `, \
-, _,
(, [
You could probably get some of the above using context but that will only get you so far.
The Anoto pen is not yet introduced to the market, it will be around this summer I think. But I think it is really an amazing invention. Actually, I think it has the potential to be really big. Big like Palm or Nokia even. Imagine, instead of writing your email on a screen, you write it on a special paper form, with subject, recipient and message fields, and then check the "send" box. The Anoto pen sends the message with Bluetooth to your mobile phone, which forwards it to the internet.
Or, you use your old fashioned Rolodex to keep track of appointments. The difference is, this Rolodex uses Anoto-prepared paper, so that when you write down your appointment it know not only what you wrote, but also where you wrote it. So it sends an "appointment message", via your phone, to your central calendar application somewhere on the net. When time for the appointment comes, the application will remind you, perhaps with an SMS.
Also check out the other product from the same inventor, the C-Pen: www.cpen.com.
The only data transmission method I can do faster than typing is talking. A revolutionary input device will have to not only be easier to use but be faster and more efficient too.
Your
if the pen replaces both the mouse and the keyboard, imagine trying to aim a weapon while moving....
thus there is no way this pen device (a new optical mouse) could replace both mouse and keyboard. i must admit, i think it would be a very usable replacement for just mice, though since people are probably more precise with their fingers than with their whole hands. (i use mice with my fingers. =)
Keyboard + Mouse = Pen (with cool clicking sound)
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
Hasn't "Digital Pens" been utilized in nearly every PDA?
That's the same question with other opjects...
Geekcode: GCS d+ s++:- !a C++ UB++++ P++ L+++ E--- W++ N+ o K- w--- O- M- V- PS++ PE-- Y+ PGP++ t 5 X++ R- tv-- b++ D
i dunno, but personally i'd much rather type than write any day. certainly, keyboards could be more efficient... (Dvorak standard?) but a pen? nah... i think pen input is great when i want to draw or paint in photoshop, but as far as daily use... eh eh.
of course... while i'm dreaming... i still think it'd be so much easier if we had thought-reading input devices....
These things are going to end out like CueCats!
The foremost rule is to adapt to the user and not the user to you! Obviously these companies don't give up do they!
I agree that the pen could be a good replacement for the mouse in some cases. It would be much faster to point and tap directly on what you want on the screen than to locate the mouse cursor, move the mouse to the right place, and click.
But there are also problems to consider such as protecting the screen from repetitive poking and scratching, and tiring out your arm from holding up a pen in front of you as opposed to resting it on the mouse's back.
I have used Newtons for 6 years and still do. I also own and use a Palm m500. I have tried hand writing recognition ('HWR') on Wince too.
... you get the picture. These are errors that a spell checker won't find. You would need a meaning checker to fix that. I'ld love to see the code for one of them!
1) the important advantage of HWR over a keyboard is that you can do it with one hand (like certain other activities), i.e. when you are standing up holding the device, or when you have your telephone in the other hand. For me, this is pretty often. One handed typing is much slower and less accurate than strongarm Newton text input.
2) HWR is far superior to speech since it can tell the difference between 'there' and 'their', 'sea' , 'c', 'see'
3) I type faster, but there is still a pleasure for me in writing on my Newton. It just feels like a more natural process than typing. With practice it has become no different from writing on paper, but with less losability.
4) the early Newtons garnered a ridiculous reputation because the HWR engine was slightly too crude and the device was too slow. They were painful to use and you had to watch for mistakes. With Newton OS 2 the HWR software had 2 recognisers, one for printed and the other for cursive. The clever thing was that you could write either, and it would guess which way you were writing on a word by word basis. This was much better and is still the best HWR system I have seen, but the ARM chip was still too slow. Then came the strongARM Newtons (160MHz in 1998?) which were, and are superb, and started to lay the reputation to rest and sell in numbers. Then Steve came back and axed the (at last profitable) division in a message of hate to Sculley, whose baby the project was. It is rumored to have cost Apple $1 billion.
5) Graffiti was bundled with the 1st Newtons as an extra for when you realised that the inbuilt cursive HWR was useless, but by OS 2 Graffiti was redundant as OS 2 HWR screws it for speed, accuracy and pleasure. No matter how good you get at Graffiti, you still can't write joined up, which is why I don't use my Palm, since Newton joined-up ('cursive') HWR is 3 times quicker than the fastest Palm user I know (yes - sad as it sounds, we raced).
6) my experience is that the threshold speed of input is decisive. Newton cursive HWR is fast enough that I write reams into it and it therefore organises my whole life. Graffiti OTOH is too slow to keep up with the bones of a telephone conversation or meeting, so it is a case of 'nothing in, nothing out'.
Since the subject of Newton has been raised, I should mention that out of all the computer OS's that I have used, Newton 2 is the greatest example of how an OS should be designed. We are only now starting to see some of its futuristic features appear in desktop and other systems. To name but seven:
soups (kind of like XML format for all data)
services API (kind of like OS X services but more, so you could write a serious spreadsheet app in a week)
the 'Intelligent Assistant' button which could respond sensibly wherever you wrote them, to scribbled phrases like 'lunch with Mark on Friday' or 'time in Hanoi' or '60*60*24='
ink text (recorded hand writing which could be HWR'd later)
gestures (like scrubbing anything to delete it)
automatic compression of all user data
live data (no saving)
What Sculley's boys realised was that desktop style OS's aren't really that suitable for handheld devices, so out with the desktop, folders, documents & cetera, and in with the reporters notepad paradigm. Interface visionaries seem to be out of fashion these days.
You still here?
"Hi there! It looks like you're trying to write your own name! Can I help you:
@Remember your name?
@Look up a new name?
@Start a bulleted list?"
You know what?
I avoid using the mouse whenever possible. I have function keys (in various combinations with Control and Shift keys) mapped to warp to my various windows such as xterms, netscape, xdvi, gv, etc. The mouse slows me down too much. I mainly use about 10-12 of those mapped function keys to get around my desktop; it takes very little time to get used to, and is easy and fast.
I can't imagine that using a pen would be any faster than a mouse, so I wouldn't be very interested.
I don't know if there is an official name for the syndrome, but those afflicted by it are commonly know as "Suckers."
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
I still prefer my HandEra 330, though. Unless color is a big thing for you, I think the 330 is the ultimate Palm device right now :)
What is your Slash Rating?
Hey... one of my most common keystrokes is "Alt-tab". How exactly do I do that quickly with pen input?
Such phrases (sentences which contain all the letters of a given alphabet) are called ``pangrams'' or abecedariums (or abecedarian sentences).
There's an Adobe employee who ``collects'' them, and his collection has been published a couple of times---I was doing that for a time (collecting), but got bored with it---did write one of my own which I used in the ``Typeface Terminology'' broadside which is in my portfolio on my web page at http://members.aol.com/willadams
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Yes.
.pdfs for proofs for our customers and it's a nuisance trying to do traditional proofreader's marks with a mouse.
I think you need to try out some more modern software. Abby Software's Finereader Pro v5 gets 99.9--99.999% correct (we just used it for scanning a ~600 page legal textbook here at work (doing a new edition of it)). It seems to use a dictionary-based lookup system, but there're dictionaries for just about everything (but math, still having stuff which is equation-heavy keyed)
Although handwriting recognition on the early Newtons wasn't all that great (I've got an MP 100), for those with patience who were willing to exert some effort ot improve their handwriting, it's quite acceptable (and it did a lot to make my handwriting much better). Newtons running Newt OS 2 and later were amazingly good and recognized as fast as anyone I've ever met can write (and a ``handwriting repair instructor'' who's one of the world's fastest at penmanship finds it quite fast enough and advocates it highly). For some reason, Steve Jobs pulled Newton, Inc. back under the Apple umbrella and refused to let anyone else have access to the technology (people tried). Sad.
For my part, I've given up on Apple doing a pen slate (when I first saw the G4 iMac my first hope was that the display was detachable and included a processor, storage and battery and had pen input a la the Wacom Cintiq (which is an LCD w/ an integrated Wacom graphics tablet)), and've finally purchased a pen slate, which I've almost completed setting up and configuring, and am very much enjoying.
Advantages of pen input systems:
- quiet (no clicking of keys)
- non-threatening (a lot of my college professors refused to let me use a laptop to take notes---no one ever gainsaid the Newton)
- allows one to draw naturally (I'm a graphic designer by trade, and can't bear to use a system which doesn't have a Wacom or other graphics tablet). Drawing with a mouse is like drawing with a bar of soap.
- excellent for annotating / marking up a document---we use Adobe Acrobat
Drawbacks
- tends to be expensive
- limited choices for hardware / software (nothing for Mac OS, no cursive recognizer for Linux AFAICT)
- handwriting recognition requires some discipline to write in a fashion readily recognized by the system.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I believe this pen could be a good option for those that are the opposite of me, however to say it will 'replace' it is like saying a new flavor at Baskin Robbins will 'replace' chocolate... or any/all of the other flavors.
Being good human beings, we've adjusted admirably to contraptions such as keyboard and mouse pointing devices," said Charles Golvin, a mobile phone industry analyst with Forrester Research. "But these are very, very poor ways to go about interacting with such machines."
Yeah, did anyone consider that the pen is just an older form of the keyboard? All that has happened is that the good human beings that we are have adjusted to this pen technology that is a couple thousand years old. Something new would be reading brain signals. Then all you have to do is dump the language part, that's true data input.
New Titanium Chisel Technology (TCT) promises to change all that. Using ultra-modern, flexible "stone" tablets made out of composites, together with titanium chisels, people can now enjoy the convenience and pleasure of writing using the human-centered technologies while still enjoying portability close to that of writing plumes and parchment.
Titanium Chisel Corporation is a fast-growing, high-technology, privately held startup, located in Granite Valley, Nevada, where most of the fast-growing, exciting stone and stone-age technology companies of the world are located.
I still use my Newton on a daily basis. It has great handwriting recognition and is far more convenient than thumb typing.
I find it very sad that most PDA stylus experiences came from the Palm OS world where an inferior handwriting recognition technology has given them the impression that handwriting recognition is slow, cumbersome, inacurrate and unreliable. Even more disturbing is that most people seem to be stuck with that impression and are willing to give up on this technology when it has so much more potential. It's disheartening to think that by the time somebody comes up with a PDA that is as capable as my Newton, that it probably won't have handwriting recognition because the public will have rejected the technology based on some early failures.
By the way, I do know the history of Grafiti and its use on the first generation Newtons that had horrible handwriting recognition. I also acknowledge that one of the primary reasons (among many many others) for the failure of the Newton was that it was too expensive due to the extreme computing demands required by handwriting recognition and that the correpsonding success of the Palm was that it found a way to get most of the advantages of handwriting recognition by using a less computationally intensive approach known as Grafiti. Grafiti had it's place, but we have the power now, to do much more.
Please don't abandon this fantastic technolgy because of some bad past experiences and the lack of a current successor to the Newton. If users demand it, we can have it.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
A number of people have commented that they can type faster than they write. Statistics would bear this out. The average writing speed is 25 words per minute, whereas an average to good typist would type 50-120WPM.
You have 8 to 10 digits on the keyboard at any given time, and need only to make one swift movement with one finger to type each letter. Sometimes even words can be combined into swift movements - you can pump out ten letter words without even moving your fingers (it's easy with Dvorak). Pens, on the other hand, require three digits to operate, and require as much as 4 strokes to write one letter. You also then have to take into account bad handwriting (which doesn't sit too well with bad character recognition). I know I can type almost as fast as one dictates, but I can barely keep up using illegible "shorthand" scribbles and incomplete sentences while using a pen. Not to mention the cramps! /this/ is where we should put our money.
I believe some company sells (or will sell) a "virtual" keyboard - finger motions are translated into keystrokes. IMHO,
All the /. posts so far seem to be of the order "Gee whiz, my uber typing skilz are so much better than my writing." For raw data entry, obviously, the keyboard is king. But I can think of at least a bunch of situations where a wireless light pen that works on any surface would be useful.
1. Scribbling notes during meetings.
2. Automagically inputting all the whiteboard discussions with colleagues into your PC.
3. Data input for PDA / phone devices
4. Drawing flowcharts, graphs, chinese characters, math equations, ANYTHING that isn't ASCII text.
There is a HUGE market for these devices, since the entire world doesn't consist of programmers who type code all day.
Hindu isn't a language.
I can't imagine writing myself a "4" everytime I want to switch to a rocket-launcher.
:)
Of course not -- if you are talking about any version of Quake, writing a "4" gives you a machinegun
With off-the-shelf packages, perhaps. Though training does help, just as with voice recognition.
As a researcher in the computer vision field, I've seen 99.8% accuracy used for OCR on Tibetan religious texts that are in far from good condition. There are several Tibetan OCT projects on the go which aim to save religious texts from destruction.
OCR is very popular with Asian dialects.
i bet one of these great pens would be easy as hell to lose. from what i gathered, they wouldn't be attached to the computer at all and would be wherever the hell my little brother thinks to lose it. pens are a relic of the past.. they aren't natural parts of people, but they worked for what we needed them to do (write on paper that is). keyboards, mice, joysticks, whatever were all designed with computers in mind.. thats like trying to make a car get pulled by a mechanical horse - just stupid.
So, in the future, the pen will be mightier than the 'board?
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
There are two major advantages to pen input.
One, pen input is free form. That means it is far more versatile than a keyboard. With a pencil and paper I can write, draw, and even paint (to a limited extent), all with equal ease, all without switching modes or anything. It's the most versatile and intuitive way of recording information known.
Two, the keyboard is only good for inputting certain phonetic langauges such as English and Romantic ones. It is not designed for, say, Japanese with its two sets of 150 alphabets, let alone Chinese which is without an alphabet at all. Those who favour the keyboard seem to be rather limited in their knowledge of natural languages.
It's not to say that the keyboard has no advantages. Right now I am typing on a keyboard because it is better for English.
I don't think the pen will completely replace the keyboard. They should be complementary forms of input.
After years of using computers, and 4 working as a programmer. Sometimes I pick up a pen and paper and look blankly at the page to try and remember how to write these days. And if anyone asked me to do running writing it just wouldnt be possible (of course in school its all you used). But I wonder, is this a detrement, or just expunging useless information 8)
The lil' clip thingies on pens make cool clicking sounds if you flick 'em w/ your fingernails. Bugs the heck out of my friends, which is more than can be said of a keyboard clicking.
And handwriting was only the most visible problem. There were endless stupid bugs and design flaws. And conspicuously bad prioritization. My Newton didn't understand that punctuation characters weren't part of the alphabet -- but did know where I could find Elvis! If they had spent a little less time planting Easter Eggs...
Handwriting recognition may be more feasible than WIAKywbfatw thinks. But you have to acknowledge that Apple did a lot of damage to its reputation.