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."

Comments

Not according to MIT's Tech Review

[xee]

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?).

Try this...

[niftyeric]

STFU!@#!$!%@#*
http://www.slashdot.org
cat file | sed s/word/word2/g > newfile
vim file :q!

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..

Is current character recognition up to the task?

[WIAKywbfatw]

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.

Re:Stupid, Pointless, and Non-Intuitive.

[shepd]

>250 WPM is not uncommon among most commercial secretaries

The world record holder for typing would have issues with your ideas of maxiumum typing speed.