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Palm Kills Off Graffiti
Ed writes "PalmSource, the company that makes the Palm OS, has decided to stop using Graffiti for text input in all future versions of its operating system. Instead, it will switch to using a version of CIC's Jot recognition system, which will be called Graffiti 2. PalmSource was forced to make this move after losing a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Xerox. Jot is already used by the Pocket PC operating system.
You can read more about it on Brighthand."
that sucks
i really liked grafitti...
Now, after making my handwriting unreadable to anyone/anything but a Graffiti capable palm, the next generation devices won't be able to read what I write either. keyboards from here out, I guess.
I post links to stuff here
By the Brighthand News Team
January 13th, 2003
When you think Palm, you think Graffiti. But Palm's long-standing association with its home-grown character recognition software is about to take a dramatic turn. PalmSource, the operating system subsidiary of Palm, Inc., announced today that future versions of Palm OS will not contain Graffiti. Rather, they will incorporate a modified version of Communication Intelligence Corporation's Jot handwriting recognition software, something it's calling Graffiti 2 powered by Jot.
The impetus for the switch appears to be legal rather than technical. In April 1997, Xerox sued Palm, claiming that Graffiti was essentially derived from its patented Unistrokes technology. Unistrokes, or "Unistrokes for Computerized Interpretation of Handwriting", as it is referred to in Xerox's 1997 patent, is a system of text-entry using single-stroke symbols for computerized recognition of handwritten text. However, it appeared Palm dodged a legal bullet when, in June 2000, a federal judge dismissed the case. But in late 2001, Xerox won a reversal in the U.S. Court of Appeals and the lawsuit was back on, and it's been hanging over Palm's head ever since.
CIC's Jot recognition software has long been found on competing handhelds running on the Pocket PC platform. As with Graffiti, its alphabet is based on block characters. However, unlike Graffiti, some characters require two rather than one stroke. Therefore, Jot characters more closely resemble common block letters than Graffiti characters. According to Marlene Somsak, Palm's VP of Communications, this will reduce the learning curve. "For new Palm users, Graffiti 2 powered by Jot is more intuitive and natural than Graffiti," Ms. Somsak told Brighthand.
Hints to Graffiti's demise began to surface last year, when Palm OS licensee Handspring said it was dropping Graffiti in favor of integrated thumb-type keyboards for its Treo organizers. And Palm itself announced in November that, for the first time, it was bundling Communication Intelligence Corporation's Jot handwriting recognition software with its upcoming Tungsten W handheld.
According to Lee Williams, VP of Engineering for PalmSource, the move to Graffiti 2 will allow Palm Platform licensees the choice of foregoing the silk-screened "hard" Graffiti area, since Jot can accept input from anywhere on a device's touchscreen.
According to Mr. Williams, Graffiti 2 powered by Jot will be a modified version of the current version of Jot found on CIC's website. It will be included in future releases of the Palm operating system, including the upcoming Palm OS 4.1.2 and Palm OS 5.2, and will be included in the Palm Developer's Kit (PDK) as part of a unified API.
I expect that someone will come up with a hack or add-on application that mimics graffiti for future PalmOS machines, just the same way you can install alternate handwriting recognition systems for today's. So folks who're so well-trained in graffiti that it shows up in household notes they write probably won't have to worry too much about the Palm of the future.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
One of the big advantages of digital input is the ability to input text faster than you can write it, graffiti never made any sense to me for that reason.
Not only was (and still is) text recognition HORRIBLE, especially for people that have "unique" handwriting, like myself, but it's just so slooooow.
sig.
I never was really fond of graffiti, it was a pain to try to type in.
I finally learned, and got rather proficient at it. The breaking point was when I started to write on paper using graffiti. It was then I realized how dependant I was on it.
what a loss.... Not! Can't say I was a big fan, and I really tried to be. But anything that impairs my data input as much as it did, will not cause me to shed tears over its demise.
It seems to me that PocketPC attracts many people by the fact that it uses normal handwriting recognition instead of a "weird" Graffiti format. Most non-geek people are attracted by the fact that they do not need to learn a new way to write on this device.
I just hope that the "new" graffiti is easier on non-geeks...
RickTheWizKid
Stupid Muggle technology...
I hope we see this feature in the upcoming Palm OS release. Im still personally deciding whether I should invest in a Palm, 2nd hand iPAQ or a Dell (not sure if its possible to purchase a Dell X5 from Australia)
-----
"I cant teach..... Im a Professor!"
Ok, here we have people complaining about how grafitti is a bad thing, but in this thread there will be lots of people who really like grafitti. Am I the only one that's utterly confused?
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
Apple thought it was so important to have real handwrighting recognition in the Newton, for example, that it was willing to adopt the technology before it was ready. Conventional wisdom said that ordinary users wouldn't want to learn a funny way of writing.
Boy was Conventional Wisdom wrong! It was FUN to learn grafitti. When I first got my Palm, I couldn't wait to learn it, so I can be "in the club" like everyone else. I ran their practice app, and got good at it within an hour.
Jot's probably not too different; maybe they can put in a "Graffity Compatibility mode" now that Palm's paying the royalties.
Best Buy can have you arrested
There's nothing dumber for them to do. If you're going to make people think about a completely new user interface, they're going to think about migrating to PocketPC devices, as well.
I love Graffiti, but I have noticed that most people do not use it or similar applications. They want little thumb keyboards.
Now hold on a sec - those of us SlashDot faithful are not representative of the average Palm user. But if you look at your sister or boss or the guy on the train, very few of them like or bothered to learn Graffiti.
Oh well.
I am guessing Graffiti sucks more than if they would have tried to interpret our normal style of writing, I am glad that is gone!
I don't have a Palm because I used to have a Newton, and I got attached to the handwriting recognition. Now that grafitti is going, Palm is looking more attractive to me. The only thing that I need now is a little more power.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
wr:tng in graff1ti was so guick, 4ccurete and oonveniemt!
:P
whot th3 fsck am i goin;;;;: to do nuw?
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Just when I buy a frigging Zire, they go and change it all! I admit it guys, it's my fault. Whenever I buy anything, it gets discontinued or jacked up.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
Why is it that with new versions (of just about anything, not necessarily just in this instance) do they remove old features and replace them? Wouldn't it be easier to leave the old code in and add the new code, and then have a user preference as to which input system to use?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I was actually starting to like Graffiti.
Any chance anyone will ever resurrect the Newton's handwriting recognition engine? It was actually starting to get good near the end, before Jobs killed it.
Well, hey, if I got used to the Newton and Graffiti, I should be able to get used to something else...
I realize this is different because it is a legal switch rather than a "taste" switch. But that may give the public all the more reason to protest the change. Will people really give a darn? I wonder.
--naked
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i have been using palm since 1999. last year, i bought pocket-pc and after six months, got rid of it. i didn't like two things about it: 1) not good at recognizing handwriting (it took me a day to learn graffiti; however, six months later, i couldn't master block letter writing). 2) too much windows cluttering. The reason, I bought pocket-pc in the first place was audio record-playback functionality. if palm gets rid of graffiti, maybe, my next upgrade would be a pocket-pc.
OK, someone had to say it, so I will:
Graffiti never held a candle to the Newton's handwriting recognition. I know; I used both.
The Newton recognized my handwriting, something that my wife rarely does. I use Graffiti on my Handspring Visor now, but I really miss my Newton. Well, actually, it was the taxpayers' Newton, since testing it was part of my campus job.
Just the same, I have to wonder if the legal eagles haven't killed another good product with their new emphasis on IP issues. Graffiti wasn't the best, but it was good enough for what I have to do.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
I'm way, way, way faster entering text with one of the various freeware Qwerty screen-based keyboards (VirtualKB is great) and am toying with moving directly to one of those silkscreen thingies you can put on the graffiti area to type Qwerty there.
Graffiti is definitely not all it's cracked up to be (at least for me) while I can write the graffitis fast enough, I find it extremely disconcerting to write characters on top of each other: it goes against many years of learned behaviour (handwriting) and for this reason I don't think it'll ever feel natural. I also read somewhere an article that was talking about exactly this phenomenon.
IMHO there is no reason for graffiti/graffiti-like stuff to exist: for pdas use a Qwertyish keyboard (on screen or hardware) for tablet PCs just use standard handwriting recognition software.
-- the cake is a lie
What? No more graffiti? My homies are gonna be pissed!!!
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" -- Homer Simpson
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I mean, it doesn't matter HOW you write the text, im sure some people write in uni-strokes as it is with a pen and paper without even knowing what it is.. How could Xerox patent a writing STYLE? Can I patent the way I make a capital P? Absurd!
Thank you Xerox, from the depths of my bank account.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Check out CIC's web site for information on JOT, as well as a listing of the symbols.
Having used both grafiti and jot extensively, i find jot much less reliable. White it may be more me then the software, grafiti tends to make less mistakes, whereas i have to correct far more in jot. Oh well.
That, and all my profs have learned to read grafiti, er, my handwriting.
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
I think this is definitely a good thing. I've been using various incarnation of Palms for about 4 years now, and I vastly prefer Jot to Graffiti. Jot was one of the only commercial software products I ever purchased for my Palm. It's much more intuitive than Graffiti, though I don't think it's any faster.
The only difficulty I've had with Jot is getting it to do the underscore properly. But othe
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If you had remembered the Palm has a seperate area for numbers and letters, or even studied a little the common misinterpritations it had...
As it is it just makes it look like you can't type.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If this is true (and I'm still waiting for confirmation) it's a major blow for Palm. My wife has gone through three different Palm machines and knows graffiti as well as handwriting - tell her she'll have to learn a new system and suddenly Windows CE starts to look better.
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I can remember when playing with a iPaq store demo and playing around with the handwriting recognition settings (I can't remember what I selected), I was able to write in grafitti with great accuracy. How can Microsoft/Compaq get away with that?
I didnt even realize that I was using Jot on my iPaq, but I can make the statement that it's not that great. In fact, it kind of sucks. I dont write a whole lot on my ipaq (no wireless dammit) but if I did, I would MUCH rather have a keyboard or virtual keyboard than use pen input. By this same logic, I dont see the tablet PC being of much benefit to me.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Whenever humans have to train themselves to adapt to a computer UI, this is an example of poor design.
When *consumers* have to learn a new language just to be able to use a consumer device, that's just downright brain-damaged.
And don't tell me computers can't recognize handwriting. The ortiginal PDA, Apple's overpriced Newton, could not only read plain handwriting, it could interpret it. You would scribble: "Meet with Bob Friday" and it would find all the Bobs in your addressbook, ask which one you want, and confirm that you meen the next forthcoming Friday.
Years later the Palm can't even read plain ol text?
Oh, and Mac OS X 10.2 can read plain handwriting too. What is it about non-Apple products that make them so incapable of working for humans, instead preferring making humans work for them?
One would think that by now somebody would have figured out a way to do it for a consumer-priced device.
I see a few notes here about how this is great for PocketPC and really bad for Palm. Well here's a tidbit for you: Palm OS rocks, and PocketPC sucks. I went shopping for a replacement PDA yesterday and I found that the PalmOS 5 machines from Palm and Sony were outstanding. I also looked at PocketPC devices from HP, Toshiba, and T-Mobile. CompUSA had several models. Every single PocketPC had crashed with a message "device.exe [presumably part of the core] has executed an illegal instruction" blah blah blah. The power of Windows in your pocket!
Q: How many Newtons does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Faux! There to eat lemons, axe gravy soup!
Why not go with a Rune based system for the LOTR fan base?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Graffiti is driving me crazy these days. It worked wonders when I first bought my Palm about a year ago, but now it seems to be slowly dying out on me. I hate those portable keyboards, and one of the reasons I bought a palm was so that I could operate in silence.
I am using an m125, and I would use a mini-keyboard like the one that was released for the m705, the little black one that attaches to the bottom.
Does anyone have any suggestions for keyboard replacements for an m125?
If I understood the article, Xerox has a patent on the very idea of a recognition system that uses just one stroke per character.
This sounds to me like another bogus patent. If something is very easy to re-invent independently, it shouldn't be patentable. I thought patents were supposed to be non-obvious.
Hmmm. We want to recognize letters. Our big problem is that it's hard to tell which stroke belongs to which character. Hey... many characters are only one stroke; why not make a simplified alphabet so they ALL are only one stroke?
I mean, it's a little bit more complicated than using XOR to draw a cursor, but not that much.
P.S. Xerox may score a few bucks from this, but that is all they can manage. Palm doesn't really need Graffiti anymore.
When the PalmPilot first came out, it really did need Graffiti; handwriting recognition on an 8 MHz CPU with a tiny amount of RAM needs all the help it can get. Now, with much more computing power in the latest Palm devices, a trainable system that adapts to the user's writing is probably the right thing.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Palm should have used something like Jot from the start, or they should have copied Xerox's Unistrokes better.
Here is some Unistrokes performance data showing it to be the fastest of the bunch. There are papers comparing Graffiti and Unistrokes directly, and, again, Unistrokes comes out way ahead.
Graffiti was a really nice system for the palmpilot. it was easy, simple and fast. I'm afraid of what the newer Graffiti would be like simply because I've used the pocketpc equivilant and even though it's similar to graffiti in many ways, the places where it is different make it a real pain. not to mention is seemed to be a lot slower than graffiti simply because it required more stroke in some of the characters.
Frankly, If Graffiti can be sued, what stops xerox from suing CIC for their Jot character recgonition? especially when unistrokes looked nothing like graffiti and still won.
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I bet that transition wasn't half as bad as when coke switched out the cocaine.
"Coca Cola Oldschool"
... support open source by taking 10% of the price of a Palm(c) Tungsten (currently $499) and donate it to the open source project of your choice.
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" -- Homer Simpson
x t i & j what other characters are out there that cannot be written in a single stroke? (think cursive here)
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
USB port and ship it with a roll-up keyboard. having to learn a new way of writing just for a product to work is asinine.
contrary to some people's belief, knowing graffiti doesn't elevate you into an exclusive club. it simply means that you're willing to put up with corporate work-around solutions instead of demanding something that actually fits your needs.
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I know that Graffiti had very reasonable usability: "After one minute studying the Graffiti reference chart, about 86% accuracy is attainable. Following five minutes of practice, accuracy improves to about 97%. Without further practice, users demonstrate total retention after a one-week lapse, with accuracy holding at around 97%."
How does the usability of Jot compare? Any ideas? Personally, if I am entering text, I like to use a thumb keyboard (e.g., Blackberry). One more thing, I guess that Jot 2.0 is available as shareware. It gets good ratings, but I haven't seen any "real" usability research.
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Ken Perlin from NYU developed a great alternative, QuickWrite that, inspite of a steep learning curve, can be faster for experts to use. Palm should have adopted QuickWrite instead -- but perhaps they wanted to remain newbie-friendly.
I was just feeling depresed that Grafitti was going away as I rather liked the system...
As for me, I mostly get "G" instead of "Q", and for the longest time it took me several tries every time I wanted a "9".
I think the funniest thing about grafitti is now when I write by hand I always write a grafitti "y". I just can't help it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Supposedly, Jot uses two strokes for some of the letters, and therefore escapes patent infringement.
I just grabbed my Visor and wrote "x". Two strokes.
...
I hope this was just a joke I don't get :)
Anyways, by the time cocaine was completely eliminated from the Coca-Cola reciped, it already existed in such small traces that it had zero effect on the person consuming the drink.
Of course, and I highly suspect it, I may be talking out of my ass. -oqti
The first stroke of the X is actually the escape character you also use for cutting and pasting. Since a lot of people kept doing the X with two strokes, they just assigned [escape][left/up to right/down] to the "X" character.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
I thought I had a pretty decent candidate for an Open Source project, using ExtraSensory Perception to communicate with small electronic devices. Through a special antenna the device received brain waves, 'intention', 'wish', 'hope', 'fear', and so on and de-mulitplex the emotes though a bit of code.
Problem is, to communicate required me to get into a fit of begging, pleading, threatening, wheedling, etc. to convey the simples of instructions.
Sorta like Graffiti works already. :-/
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You're forgetting history. Until recently, computers didn't have the processing power to understand arbitrary input (and a computers attempts to still aren't perfect.) Dispite this, people who wanted the computer now instead of later adapted.
Sure, true handwriting recognition was adequete and available when the Palm first came out. But it was also processor intensive. Certainly more demanding than the puny 16 Mhz processor in the Palm. To support handwriting recognition would have required a faster processor and thus, a shorter battery life. In fact, about the time of my first Palm, Microsoft's PocketPCs had handwriting recognition. Of course, they were surprisingly warm to the touch when running and measured their battery lifespan in hours. The Palms of the era generated no noticable heat and measured their lifespan in weeks! As someone who easily forgets to buy new batteries (or recharge my newer PalmOS device), I appreciate this.
Yes, ideally my computer would perfectly understand my handwriting without any training period. However there will need to be a balance between price, battery life, heat, and ease of input for the forseeable future. For many people (including the millions of Palm users), Palm achieved the best balance available at the time.
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Forget the control key. Where's the any key?!? I can't continue like this!
Hmmm, I wonder if Palm even considered licensing Inkwell from Apple? (Inkwell is Apple's newly developed handwriting recognition software)
It's a pretty simple distinction. As far as text entry goes, imaging a person walking up to two different text entry devices. One is a keyboard. They see letters, and hitting the letters puts text on the screen. Simple, fast, obvious.
The other is a Graffiti pad and a stylus. They try what seems natural and start writing letters. Oops, some work, some don't. Hmmm, what's going on.
That's why, although people may not know the "proper" way of typing, they can still use a keyboard. You may not be as efficient, but it still works. With a Palm and Graffiti, you must learn to remember the Graffiti keystrokes to even get it to work.
It should remain a very simply process of installing a 3rd party piece of software to add Grafiti support, similar to what users of the Handspring Treo do now.
try finding one of those mini keyboards that work with the m500s, they also use the universal connection that the m125 uses, the only down side it that it would not fit nicely over the bottom, but kind of hang there.
Jimbo writes the note, then reads it back.
Jimbo: "Eat up Martha? Bah!"
Jimbo throws the Newton, hitting Martin in the head.
while that's true in many situations, this is one where the inventors of the palm went against this common sense (and the sort of ui "gospel" you're regurgitating from a first semester ui class or some don norman book) and they were quite right.
my understanding is that part of the reason that the palm won out is because of graffiti. it was simpler to use than training something like a newton to use your own writing. recognition requires lots of cycles, and with graffiti working well on the palm, why change?
some might argue it's also much faster for entry, though i don't have a reference to back that up, so save that discussion for boring papers at ui conferences.
i think it's dangerous to say "this = that" especially for something as young a field as ui design.
Quite a few printed letters we write every day require multiple strokes to write them cleanly and properly.
That may be true for printed letters, but among Latin lowercase cursive letters, the only ones that need more than one stroke are i (need the dot to distinguish ii from u) and t (crossed).
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No, I learned to type by using a mechanical typewriter that my mom had from her college days, and it wasn't until ~1984 that my dad first got our family an AT&T electric typewriter.
Remember, the QWERTY keyboard layout was designed so the traveling salesman could type out "TYPEWRITER" by using only one row of the keyboard; that's about the extent of "efficiency" in its design. When the first mainframe computers (and accompanying terminals) were developed, it was only natural that they adopted the only common interface that the technologists were familiar with.
In this case, humans built a machine to fit their already-learned interface. The above poster is arguing that building the machine with an arbitrary interface, then forcing the users to learn it, is not the best approach in designing for customer acceptance... and I whole heartedly agree.
I had a PocketPC (Nino) before switching to Palm. The relatively restrictive "graffiti" and the piss-poor application integration were my only complaints against the otherwise superior Palm (Vx). Oh, wait, it was those things, and the fact that the Palm has a permanent writing area, instead of the much more clever virtual one.
Point being, hacking up Jot to do Graffiti would be a step backwards in my opinion.
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Palm using Graffiti goes way back to the early nineties. One would think that they would have no problem proving prior art.
-- Len
So am I. I kinda liked learning Graffiti. Then eventually I got tired of my Palm and let it gather dust for a couple of years.
A friend showed me her spiffy new Palm last week. She handed it to me and said, "Here, put in your phone number and email address for me." I was rusty at Graffiti, but managed to fill in the info, stumbling over a couple of forgotten characters. Those happy finishing-a-puzzle neurons were firing; ahhh. Fun.
When I handed it back to her, she said, "You know, you're the only person so far who did this with Graffiti. Everybody else had to pull up the onscreen keyboard."
The simple, rounded letter forms of Tengwar may lend themselves to Jot better than the angular forms of Anglo-Saxon runes. While I can't see any way to write Anglo-Saxon runic 'y' with any fewer than 4 strokes, and I'd see a lot of slowdown on a form likke 'st', most Tengwar letters require only one or two strokes.
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The X is no different than the other characters. You create the character, without lifting the stylus from the screen. No pen lift, so it's a "unistroke"
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At least on my Dell Axim, it's called "block recognizer" as opposed to "letter recognizer"
Block Recognizer - "With BR, you can input character strokes you may have learned using Grafitti from Palm"
Letter Recognizer - "With LR you can input natural character strokes as well as strokes you may have learned using Jot from CIC."
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
The patent you point to does not look like something that graphiti would infringe on because graphiti is not rotationaly independent and graphiti uses a seperate area for numerals. Suppose this and other reasons are why the case was tossed out?
In any case, the patent itself is broad and very late. The referenced material dates back to 1982 and we can be sure that there was plenty of prior art. Yes, this is essentially patenting all styles of handwriting that might be easy for a computer to read. The same things make hadwriting easy for people to read as well. The is why most alphabets are mostly rotationally independent and involve as few strokes as possible. If Palm was ugly enough to keep others from using graphiti type systems, they deserve the same treatment, but it all goes to show how silly patents have become.
I'm going to miss graphiti as the replacements, short of a keyboard, just don't work. As Xerox managed to NOT file until 1997, it will be a decade before others may use this without paying Xerox a fee. I hope Xerox will be reasonable, ten years from now voice recognition will be good enough on portable devices and graphiti will be worthless.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This was discussed when the original ruling was announced. You can draw your own conclusions, but you probably ought to at least review the history of the lawsuit.
Wow, your comment perfectly complemented your nick. I hope that never never happens to me.
I agree with the part about people adapting to the computer UI, but in the case of Palm, Graffiti was the proper UI decision to make for that era.
In UI design, just as in engineering, we have trade-offs. You let something give in one area to get something in return. Palm's design had to use grafitti because it was the only way to create a device that was capable of fitting easily in your shirt pocket and running on batteries for entire month(s) (a Palm back then with a 200mhz CPU like the one in my zaurus would have been like carrying around a brick). People seem to forget that how people interact with hardware UI is just as much part of the user experience as how they act with the software UI. This is doubly true for a device that is carried around as opposed to one that sits on your desk all day. In fact, the creator of the Palm, Jeff Hawkins, did something that few PDA creators actually do: he shaped a block of wood (i.e. made a prototype) that would easily fit into the pocket and from there built up the model of user interaction with the hardware by carrying the thing around to meetings and writing on it (that's how he came up with grafitti). Any good UI design person will tell you that you should design the interface before you start designing the technical stuff (as opposed to grafting it on last as 'a testament to modularity'). I really wish that designers of mobile devices took half as much care designing their products as Jeff Hawkins did with the original Palm.
While the Newton was a great idea, it was somthing that didn't easily fit into the pocket. I had heard rumors that mac journalist Andy Ihnatko actually created a "holster" so that he was able to carry the Newton around with him whereever he went; if that isn't a great example of a human being forced to adapt to clunky technology, I don't know what is.
But your are completely right to criticize grafitti in this day and age. Palm processors have gotten faster and memory has gotten larger, yet none of these resources have been used to make Palms handwriting recognition any more accurate or Grafitti any more humane. For crying out loud, the next generation of mobile devices will have 400mhz StrongARM processors; before we use this all this power to do multi-media this and wireless connectivity that, we should make sure that people have the ability to easily write stuff into their PDA's.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Is 1993 (original intro of the Newton) or 1995 (intro of NewtonOS 2 with the "greatly improved handwriting recognition system") considered "newly developed"? Seems like porting it to cocoa/carbon/NextStep wouldn't be that difficult...
A
Its not exactly cheap to fight anything against a major corporation like Xerox. While Palm may be a fairly large company, I think Xerox is larger. It was probably cheaper to license this then fight for Graffiti. It also sounds like this is a bit better, so Palm may have already been considering it. So, it probably is a financial decision I'd presume.
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I learned "keyboarding" on a real typewriter- a mechanical device that required ink and eraser ribbon. And it has come in handy over the years- though typing with less pressure is very difficult.
I'm guessing that you've never owned or extensively used a pocket organizer. Your solution doesn't make sense for a number of reasons:
The long and short of it is that numerous organizers, from the Zaurus to the Psion to a number of supercompact laptops, have tried to incorporate keyboards, and it's just not as viable a solution as something like Graffiti. Having the option to do so isn't a bad idea (current Palms support add-on full-size keyboards, I believe), but it just wouldn't work for so many people.
I've owned several Palms, over the last 5 years. I love graffitti, it's quick and easy for me now.
For Xmas, my bud got me a Dell Axim for a present. One of the first things I figured out, was how to put it in "Block Recognizer" mode, so that it understands Grafitti.
Now Palm's moving away from Grafitti, basically leaving all of their existing customer base wtih their best upgrade option for the future, being to move to the competitions products, since it better suits their ingrained habits.
Seems like a disastrous decision to me.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
...the writing was on the wall.
(Chortle, chortle, chortle...)
Seriously though, this will likely cause much consternation to Palm power users who can enter graffiti at hyperspeeds. I gather this might hurt the upgrade market in the near-term until those users get over it.
Quote: they're going to think about migrating to PocketPC devices, as well.
Show me the $100 PocketPC that holds all the apps and data I could want and runs its OS smoothly and I'll buy one right now.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
I'm enjoying the surprisingly-usable keyboard on the Handspring Treo. I was pretty proficient with graffitti, so I was sad to see that I could not get a Treo with it, but now I prefer their keyboard. Now if it only came in Dvorak, I'd be even happier....
Anyone tried the new little thumb keyboard on the latest Treo from handspring? You can FLY on that thing compared to any handwriting recognition. Handwriting recognition never really made sense as a computer input, since it's slow by natre (a single keystroke is much easier than drawing out an entire letter). The little keyboard on the Treo seems to be too small to use, but after using a palm for about a year, I was already inputting much faster on the Treo. I think this is the way to go as far as PDA input goes. (Hint Hint Hint Palm)!
I'm seeing a lot of reactions along the lines of " Graffiti kicked ass! This sucks!" and responses saying "Graffiti sucks! Newton's better 'cause it can read real handwriting!" and so on. To me, this is all irrelevant because the best input option is neither: it's the keyboard. A lot of people seem to think that handwriting is better because it's more "natural", but they're overlooking a century of experience that tells us that people can be much faster with input using a keyboard. Trying to get a machine to understand handwriting is a cool idea, but why would you bother with that when you can just enter charachters manually, with much better accuracy and speed?
I recently got a Handspring Treo for christmas, and I'm already used to the controls - I didn't have to waste time teaching myself a new writing system, or trying to teach the thing my handwriting style. When I need to enter 'Q', I just press the button that says 'Q'. How much simpler can you get?
I've noticed that a lot of new handhelds (Treo, Blackberry, Hiptop) have integrated keyboards instead of handwriting-recognition. I think this is because the "gimmick" factor of writing on a computer have faded, and people are more concerned about usability now. It's just too bad Palm decided to go to another flaky "writing system" instead of putting a decent keyboard in.
Are there any opensource handwriting recognition code projects out there? If a good app was developed, couldn't it be implemented as a palm hack?
Why not just license the technology ? It's not like Xerox haven't contributed useful technology to the IT world.
Why is it that everytime it's an individual showing innovation, we support them - and yet when it's a corporation we bag them ?
I like Graffiti - it's quick and not terribly difficult to learn.
Palm should've sold themselves to Apple when they had a chance. Apple's been ripping Xerox off FOREVER.
Our council has been trying to get rid of graffiti for years...
The advantage is that the keyboard is designed to lessen pen (stylus) movement based on common words. It is highly customizable and supports international characters. shifting, special characters, etc.
I like it and it works for me. I won't miss Graffiti at all. Worth a look if you're interested in alternatives.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
Hey, my Newton 110 had handwriting recognition! And it was 7 years ago when I had it!
Seeing as Handspring has moved completely to using keyboards in their Treo line (and the Visor line has been killed off), I wonder what Jeff's take is on the (non)use of Graffiti? I mean, don't get me wrong, the usability that Handspring has put into their keyboards is amazing (great keyboard shortcuts, if you've never used one yet), but I actually like using Graffiti. Now that the "real" Graffiti is dead, I wonder what his feelings are on input for handhelds in general.
In fact, I would love to see a Slashdot interview with him on this very topic. I like the thumbboards, but I find that I can't touch type on them yet, which makes it hard to write notes and pay attention to the person that I am listening to (in a meeting, for example). That's why I loved Graffiti.
Don't get me wrong, Jot isn't bad, but I actually like having single strokes for common letters (read: I don't want to two strokes for K, T, etc.).
Until they support actual handwriting. Mine sits on my desk unused because I don't want to waste my time learning a new alphabet - an alphabet that was created out of the need for a company to sell a product ASAP instead of innovating (like Apple tried to do with the Newton).
What's up with the scores on these posts? My original went from 1 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 2. Interesting. And the final scores seem to be settling on the whole keyboard-being-learned issue.
The above post makes the real point though... everyone has to learn to write. The joy of handwriting recognition is NOT having to learn another language/technique/etc..
Yes, handwriting is learned, but let's limit the number of languages we have to learn, OK?
Is Jot called the block recognizer in PocketPC? Because if it is, it's almost exactly like graffiti. Block recognizer on my ipaq works with most graffiti strokes, although there are a few annoying differences. Many of the undocumented strokes don't work on PocketPC - e.g. you can't draw a B by writing 3 in the letter area. It makes you draw the full letter which is a pain in the ass.
Besides that, doesn't seem like there's much difference. How is graffiti infringement, but Jot isn't?
I used a PalmPilot IIIx until it was dead, an now I have a Visor Prism, and have loved each. I have the eyeModule2 and the InnoGear MP3 handspring Modules for my Prism, both very cool, especially when traveling
I think my next PDA will be a Zarus though, as I use mine for just about everything.
Didn't Xerox try this with the mouse and windows/gui systems a while back.... patent weasels!
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
I skipped over the concurrence in the appellate case, which turned out to be a mistake, since it specifically addresses the mysterious 'X:' "[F]or Xerox to prevail, it must prove that each unistroke symbol in the accused symbols (i.e., all symbols except for "x" which is composed with two strokes) has (a) graphic separation, (b) definitive recognition, and (c) spatial independence."
So, I was in error; it would not have been sufficient for Palm to have made the 'X' a multistroke character. Damn these patent cases!
I'm going to have to take some time tonight and read the district court's final decision to satisfy myself, but here's a relevant excerpt on this matter:
Patent law: Meh. M-E-H, "meh.""Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
I'm not arguing real handwriting recognition wasn't possible. I'm arguing that it's not possible given the desired form factor and battery life. My first Palm (a Palm III) was 4.7 x 3.2 x 0.7 (inches), and I viewed it as irritatingly bulky, but at least it fit in my pocket. Your Newton was a monstrous 8.0 x 4.0 x 1.25. It's not going into my pocket. I carry my Palm everywhere, so size is critical. Furthermore, my original Palm III lasted about a month doing moderate to heavy PDA usage on two AA batteries. How long did your Newton last?
The Newton was, by all accounts, a sweat piece of hardware. But that power and handwriting recognition demanded a beefier processor, a larger case, and used more power. Palm guessed, correctly, that people would sacrifice power and handwriting recognition for size and battery life.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
This seeems to be happening a lot:
1) company has lousy ProductName
2) company buys better technology
3) company names this completely incompatible product "ProductName 2" or something like that.
4) customers are confused, especially those who don't read slashdot
Don't even think about posting a ??? Profit message on this.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
You should ask for a refund on that WinCE thing you used to write that post. Really, Graphiti was passable and worked. Have you tried entering text on one of those PocketPC things? It's awful. Combine that with how well M$ interfaces scale and you get something that should be refunded.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I always thought the handwriting systems in general were pretty stupid for most things. Some people here on slashdot may remember the "Avigo" handheld that Texas Instruments had out there for a while. I owned an Avigo (still do, actually), and its alternative to handwriting recognition was really great.
The idea is simple: you have an on-screen keyboard with letters grouped together. ABC, DEF, etc. You tap the button that has the letter you need on it, then the next, etc. As you go along, the Avigo references a dictionary and the context to try and figure out which word you're typing from the combination of letters. I found that about 90% of the time, its guess was right-on with what I was trying to type. And when it wasn't, the alternatives were listed right on-screen, so all I had to do was tap.
It's a shame that Palm et al haven't implemented something like this on modern handhelds. The Avigo had very little power, very little memory, and it managed to pull off word-recognition really well. It was a lot faster than Graffiti, and a lot more accurate. C'mon, Palm! You need something to propel you ahead of the PocketPCs, and this is it! Give the people something faster and more accurate than scribbling on a plastic screen for God's sake.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Actually, no, it's not Offtopic. It's just too obscure to stand alone.
I remember having graffiti software for an old messagepad 130 I had in the early ninties. I still have the floppy disk. I believe this was before the palm existed. I think this is a pretty lame patent win for xerox.
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
2F05
Oh, and IMHO, Xerox bears a lot of resemblance to HyperGlobalMegaNet.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
According to the article:
In April 1997, Xerox sued Palm, claiming that Graffiti was essentially derived from its patented Unistrokes technology.
That's really odd. I thought Pee Wee Herman had the patent on Unistrokes.
Or if it was, it at least didn't have the same cooler-than-you appeal that Graffiti did, probably because it was done by lower-paid-than-techies typists using dead trees. It did actually have some coolness factor, but that was made up for by the fact that 99% of the people using it were using it to do things for somebody else, rather than using it to do things for themselves, and it was usually followed by typing the stuff. And while some of them were secretaries, many of them were just typists.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The funny thing about the Coke story is, if that guy would have bought 2000 cases of the "new" Coke, they'd probably be worth something by now. As you know, Coke switched back the the old recipie after the public outcry.
Umm... I think that QWERTY keyboard was invented to reduce the probability of a jam when hitting two neighboring keys accidentally as well as from a very fast typist typing too fast...
Mechanical typewriters have an interesting rhythm when being used by someone who can touchtype...
Yes, but oldtimers may remember that Graffiti is older than the Pilot. Palm used to make Graffiti for the early Newtons (in the 'Egg Freckles' days), back when Newtons were the *only* PDAs.
is to have rows of levers on the back of each side of my PDA, kind of like court stenographers have but vertical down the back. Then I can just grab it with 2 hands and type by chording.
Sure, it may take me a couple days to learn, but imagine the l33tness factor! Heck, I might even get laid at the supermarket.
I totally disagree with the original poster on this. Everyone I know who bought a Palm did so without giving a lot of thought to how they'd get data entered. Sure, they probably heard it used something called grafitti for handwriting, but they assumed it wasn't too difficult to master, so was largely a non-issue.
If anything, I heard a few grumbles about it being too hard to remember how to write characters not often used (say, the & or % or ^). I *rarely* heard people say it was superior to regular handwriting.
Furthermore, the Jot software was available for Palm for about $30 for quite a while. (I even bought a copy myself.) So at least some of us were using Jot with a Palm device all along. It's just that now, new devices will have it built in.
Grafitti is far superior to printing--each letter takes less effort and the results are clearer. Cursive can be faster, but then it's illegible.
XEROX PRESS RELEASE:
Xerox Inc. is pleased to announce that as a result of the settlement between Xerox Corporation (Ticker: XRX) and Palm Inc. (Ticker: PALM) all new Xerox copiers will now have handwriting recognition controls.
"We are confident that by eliminating regular buttons, on our copiers, we can enhance shareholder value and produce a better product for our customers" a Xerox spokesperson said.
A Xerox engineer gave a demonstration of the new technology:
"Let's say you want 15 copies double-sided. Our old copiers required you to push four buttons "1", "5", "DOUBLE SIDED" and "START". Now all you have to do is write out "15 COPIES - DOUBLE SIDED - START" on the handy hand writing recognition pad....letters on the left, numbers on the right." "Isn't that much easier than pushing buttons?"
-ted
but it didn't work...
and if you would like to say that it did work then I bet you altered your handwriting so it was recognizeable to the machine...
and I still don't think it worked.
Coke Classic's formula isn't the same as the Coke it attempts to emulate. Classic contains high fructose corn syrup and/or sucrose (sugar). The real deal was sucrose all the way, baby!
What the hell are Xerox playing at persuing this patent case when they aren't making any money out of the tech anyway. You really would have thought that they would be able to offer Palm a reasonable offer to license the IP given that it is already installed in millions of devices worldwide. Whoever is running Xerox these days seems to be a moron. In fact this isn't really anything new is it: Xerox had world beating technology many times in the past and failed to capitalise on it through poor business decisions.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
I just found a great update for m125, a "digitizer update" This makes everything much much more accurate.. so now I'm quite happy with my m125 and grafiti (as compared to my earlier post) :-)
to call Graffiti 'world beating'. I'd call it 'sanity defeating'. Bout drove me crazy. Did drive me off the platform.
Now, the plain text recognition in the Newton - that was world beating (er, had the world paid attention, granted). Nearly every day I write messy (nicely recognized) notes in my 2100 newt I wonder, "Lord! what would it be like if Apple had worked on it since '98!?!"
*sigh*
I'm like Iron Man with his armor - on the shelf I have all my past newtons and several current ones (ebay) in case one is damaged in battle...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Grafitti-like
The recognition is not much better than on palm's grafitti, but pocket pc's recognition is software based, inthat, instead of that box at the bottom of all palms where you have to write, pocketpc can hide that box whenever you want, just by hitting a button. I get about 70-80% accuracy with the grafitti like system(lifting your pen off the surface can can make unwanted letters to popup). This is the best system to use for me.
Freehand Recognizer
As part of that freehand input, you can run a notepad like program in pocketpc, that lets you write on the screen, and then "recognize" your handwritten notes. Very cool, but not all that useful, about 50% accuracy (not worth using regularly).
QWERTY Keyboard
Pocketpc also uses that software input box for a keyboard that is quite useful to use. Not as productive as a full sized ofcourse, but decent typing can be done by hunt-and-pecking. I would say about 85% recognition, but it is slow, accurate, but slow.
Transcriber
I have a third option for my pocketpc. Transcriber is a microsoft program that lets you write in free hand on the screen and takes it as any other input(similar to notepad,but usable in any program). It is more of a novelty than an utility as regocnition for it isn't great, but the program idea is quite cool. Around 60-70% worth using, neat to have, but a novelty.
Ok, I am done. Thank you for listening.
Writing umlauted a or o is a bitch. (Probably ü is too). I often end up with a w following the letter I wanted to umlaut. IMO a better solution would have been either two dots: tap, tap or a single line in the upper part.
Ten seconds after I clicked submit, I remembered x (overcurve to undercurve, crossed), but then I realized that there exists an alternate way of writing x: overcurve, up-right stroke, undercurve.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I forgot how long my Newton last. I sold it 6 years ago and got myself a HP 200 LX. Again I sold it for a Palm IIIx. I still regret having sold the LX to this day....right now...I'm a happy camper with a Blackberry :)
I hope somebody goes through the link before posting their reply, the grafitti it points to is about site defacement.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
Let Xerox invest in Palm stock for Graffiti. Hey, worked once before.
Check out the videos
http://fitaly.com/imagevideo/dpvideo.htm
winners in were near or over 80wpm
Try writing without looking at the screen. With Graffiti you can do that very easily.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Am I the only one who wonders how you could make a user interface from this?
a classical joystick interface
or..
A new suction based device.
Perhaps this would make a good poll, anyway submit any other sugestions (+ pattent applications) and i'll get back to you when I have more money than god
The only way to probe a claim is to test it.
Unless somebody offers usability tests properly controlled any claims regarding what is easier to use sould be considered a wild speculation.
The context, the machine, the applications, all these and many other factors can influence what is easier to use.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Go and bore yourself somewhere else! Easy solution.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I do not want to learn something new for no reason!
Once again software patents screwing up invention.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At one time, GM talked about making the shell of the car easily changable. The idea behind it was if you wanted a sporty look one day, you take off the current shell and attach the sport shell. What every happened to this concept? Is it still alive or has GM abandoned it?
Graffitti on the go.
Graffitti for when you have got a little extra time. Or not.
Simple, elegant and you save money.
See? $ thought processes to arrive to the best solution (supported by market statistics and consumer choice, not wild sepculation).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Could someone please explain why this is such a huge problem??? Being the user of a sony clie I have become almost dependent on the Grafiti system, which would mean tragedy for me if the grafiti idea should be scrapped. However, I have not seen anyone even suggest this to happen, instead a new release of grafiti is to be released! The old grafiti with some new features to make handwriting on your palm easier and faster!! HOW IS THIS A PROBLEM???
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
Show me your usability tests or shut up.
Text on paper is not akin to text in a computer device.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Where are the usability tests that back up your assertion? Or are you assuming the world revolves only around you and everybody else acts exactly like you?
For all what we know you may be dislexic and have an easier time with a keyboard.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Duh! My comments above where supposed to go here. Moderate it as offtopic please.
How the hell did this get moderated as "insightful"?
The current Palm OS 5 doesn't run on Dragonball processors, it runs on RISC chips like the Intel XScale at several hundred MHz. It's safe to assume that future versions of Palm OS, as discussed in the article, will require RISC also. Therefore there's no problem with doing handwriting recognition.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
... With 400mhz ARMScale CPUs, multi gigs of flash memory, etc.. Where is the built-in continual voice recognizer on these things?
Newton could do it in beta with Dragon's speech recog software back in 1998.. Speech synthesis and recognition, along with natural HWR and/or keyboard are key..
Your post inspired an interesting thought - although I'm sure somebody thought of it before - porting a Graffiti-type language to a CAD environment. I don't know how many people actually still use a tablet (I always found them clumsy), but Graffiti would seem like a logical addition to the CAD tablet environment.
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." -- Robert Heinlein
It would not be a tragedy for me, simply a minor inconvenience; it didn't take very long for me to pick up Graffiti. (except that pesky "V".) A new scripting style couldn't be all that bad.
I've seen friends buy Palms and quickly drop them, though, because they had absolutely no patience - they expected a PC in their breast pocket and when it proved that they would actually have to spend a few hours to become proficient, they gave up, because "that onscreen keyboard is so small, and it doesn't understand my writing."
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." -- Robert Heinlein
This doesn't make sense to me. Graffiti was available for the Newton and Casio Zoomer by Christmas of 1994.
Looking at all of the Unistroke related patents we have:
Googling shows 114 references to "Zoomer Graffiti" prior to 10-26-95. The earliest start around 9-23-94 (edited for lameness):
Clearly the early presence of Graffiti as a commercial product indicates prior art no matter when the Unistroke research began or the first Palm patent was filed.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It doesn't make business sense for Palm to continue fighting this. They hold the critical (expensive to duplicate) cards, i.e. worldwide retail distribution, OEM licensees and strong consumer brand recognition. Xerox exerting this claim and failing to reach biz terms with Palm is a huge failure. It insures that they will never receive a drop of license revenue from this IP. What OEM is going to bed down with them now, when Palm (the standards maker, due to its distribution) is shipping a competing, viable alternative, already supported on the MS stuff?
Men, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds...
Graphiti totally sucked. I used it and liked it on my Palm m100. I too upgraded to a Compaq Ipaq (3765) and rarely use graphiti. The only reason I would is to walk down memory lane and laugh at how inefficient it is. The keyboard isn't as fun, but it is the quickest and won't scratch the screen.
I wonder if it will support it also. It'd be nice to support as much as possible.