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."

Comments

Don't toss out those spray paint cans yet...

[Robotech_Master]

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.

Hopefully it will be easier for non-geeks...

[rickthewizkid]

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 LOVED Graffiti!

[callipygian-showsyst]

Palm's use of Graffiti was one of the most interesting marketing decisions ever made!

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.

Well, that's it for Palm.

[rodgerd]

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.

Wouldn't this be patenting the alphabet?

[Viewsonic]

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!

Xerox patent on UNISTROKES?

[steveha]

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.

Re:What about PocketPC's?

[watchful.babbler]

Assuming I understand your question, the reason is because Graffiti and Jot share many common "swooshes" when writing letters, though not symbols. But that is self-evident.

By reading the Federal Circuit opinion that reversed the district court's summary judgment, it seems that the key issue that prevents Jot from infringing is that it "does not allow for 'definitive recognition' of symbols immediately upon pen lift by the user." Certain letters and symbols in Jot -- 'T,' 'X,' the question mark, and so on -- require multiple strokes to create the character. The actual shapes of the characters are not part of the patent, so there's no problem with Jot and Xerox's Unistroke sharing swooshes.

This leads one to wonder why the Graffiti 'X' doesn't allow Graffiti to escape infringement -- the appellate court opinion quotes the district court as citing accented characters in this sense, but not Graffiti's two-stroke 'X.' If I had to make a wild guess, I'd assume this was proffered by Palm in district court and refuted by Xerox on the grounds that the first slash in the 'X' is actually the stroke to enter extended mode, and thus the 'X' is still technically a unistroke character. If Palm had simply reversed the direction of the strokes so that the first stroke wasn't extended mode, then they might have been immunized. Of such tiny errors are great patent cases decided.