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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."
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.
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...
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!
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?"
Because they lost a patent infringement case,
they either have to pay lots of money or remove the feature entirely.
This is not by choice, they are being forced to do this.
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
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
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
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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 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.
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
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.
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?
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"
It is easier to make a V by drawing it right to left, then you don't need the little wing at the end (seriously, try it)
Finkployd
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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Did you learn to type to use the computer?
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.
Whenever humans have to train themselves to adapt to a computer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H UI, this is an example of poor design
Ah yes, the failure of the pen and keyboard. Some of of the silliest inventions.
One would think that by now someone could make a device that read minds--but apparently that is hard.
(And probably not desirable anyway. "Computer: I wanted a spreadsheet not a girl spreading on the sheets. I don't care what I was thinking this is my office! )
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
"The only 'intuitive interface' is the nipple. EVERYTHING else is learned."
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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.
...
Yeah, and remember when your teachers MADE you write in a certain way? Bet you hated it then and don't do it now...
Boy do I miss my newton!!!
---
Information wants...you to shut your pie hole.
Apple products don't exactly work for humans either unless you're a clueless newbie. OS X is an example of an OS which is wonderful to behold and great for newbies but can be an enormous pain in the backside if you have to sit in front of it the whole day, having to put up with a lobotomized interface, poor online help and some grotequely screen wasting UIs.
I'm appalled by the moderation to my own comment.
(and by my spelling I think..)
Anyway, how does such a no brainer comment get a +5 interesting/insightful??? please mod the parent post down! (its my post! do as I bid! and meta-moderators, please mod down the moderators who modded this up!)
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.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Forget the control key. Where's the any key?!? I can't continue like this!
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.
Can I interest you in some Microsoft Windows software?
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.
Jimbo writes the note, then reads it back.
Jimbo: "Eat up Martha? Bah!"
Jimbo throws the Newton, hitting Martin in the head.
I completely agree. It's one thing to learn to use a keyboard (I want a "P", so I press the "P" button). It's one thing to learn Graffiti (I want a "P", so I have to have to draw a squiggly line that has no basis in the English language). Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. That's twice as true for PDA's. A PDA only saves so much time over pen & paper, they're hundreds of times more expensive, so it'd better damn well be intuitive to interest me at all. Graffitti was a completely brain dead move for them. So, in order to replace the oh-so-complicated paper & pen, I have to buy a $500 device, keep it stocked with batteries, AND learn a new way to write? I don't think so. Personally, I don't think that PDA's will be of any real value until they're a few hundred bucks, and I can just speak into them, and let them do the work of, say, a secretary. "Meeting with Bob at 10 tomorrow. Remind me 2 hours early". That's useful. scratching something like "~10 "BOB" : 1/15/2003 #%&^&*#!" is not.
So basically, even though you read Slashdot you still don't know how to type and are thus an utter moron?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Your argument assumes that writing by hand is some sort of natural act. It isn't. You had to learn it. Just because you learned how to do that before you learned how to type or write graffiti doesn't mean that hand-writing is superior.
Is printing superior to scripting? No, scripting is much faster, but you had to learn that too. Typing is much faster than writing by hand. If repetitive-stress disorders are a problem now, think of what they'd be if everyone was trying to write out things on tablets for data entry.
The problem most usability "experts" have is that they think it's never a good idea to learn a new interface. That is not universally true. While it is a bad idea to break interface concepts that are common (like red=stop, green=go), it doesn't mean every new interface is bad. When farm tractors were first introduced, several models had the operator driving the same way they drove a team of horses. The steering mechanism was designed to mimic the old horse-drawn equipment. While this method was familiar, it wasn't superior to the car-style interface that it now used.
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).
Will I retire or break 10K?
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Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Did you learn to type to use the computer?
No, I learned to type on a manual typewriter (in 6th grade (1976); I didn't get introduced to computers until 11th grade (1981)) to avoid having to write school papers by hand.
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
I disagree.
I used to work in the computer voice recognition field, building command and control systems for the Macintosh. One thing we noticed was that when the computer misrecognized a word, the user never blamed themselves for poor pronunciation. They always blamed the computer for poor recognition. And why not? After all, you learn to speak at an early age and other humans can understand you under a wide variety of conditions, so why can't the computer?
Contrast this to entering data by the keyboard. If the user types slowly or makes a typo, the user perceives it to be her fault, not the computer. This is a critical distinction.
The genius of Graffiti is this: by forcing the user to adapt to an unnatural style of handwriting, the user blames himself for misrecognized letters. Palm not recognizing your R's? Better fire up Giraffe and practice some more!
This led to a much better PERCEIVED user experience, regardless of the Palm's text recognition error rate.
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.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Palm using Graffiti goes way back to the early nineties. One would think that they would have no problem proving prior art.
-- Len
Did you learn to type to use the computer?
Just like we all learned to type, on a QWERTY keyboard, which was designed to slow typists down so they didn't jam the early mechanical typewriters. Yet another example of designing for the machine and not the human. I'd say you've proven his point quite nicely.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
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"
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
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!
Honestly, who remembers to write the V backwards?
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Newly developed? Inkwell has existed for a long, long time. It was Rosetta, the printed recognizer on the Newton before the Newton was killed in 1997.
Strangely, I don't see why Palm doesn't have prior art claims (those apply in patent cases, right?) Graffiti was released as an enhancement to supplement the initially bad HWR on the early Newtons. I think it was available in '93 or '94 (though I don't know for sure.) Strange.
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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"The only 'intuitive interface' is the nipple. EVERYTHING else is learned."
A fact which i earnestly hope is not further expanded upon in a discussion of intuitive PDAs.
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
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.
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
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.).
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
>The point it, if the computer can recognize handwriting, why not recognize ENGLISH handwriting instead of a computer language that's really close to English.
That would make sense if handwriting was efficient.
As a typist whose peak rate reaches 90 WPM, I protest very vocally when forced to use pen and paper rather than my trusty keyboard.
Thank God I never had a newton. I may as well use a pencil and paper! At least when I hook a keyboard up to my Palm Pilot, or I use the thumboard on my RIM pager I can approach a decent working speed!
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
But the same principal still applies. If you want to use a keyboard, whether that's a computer keyboard or a typewritter, you still have to learn how to use it.
What if you had never used a typewritter before?
And the fact that you choose to use a keyboard over handwritting seems to suggest that learning a new UI was acctually of benifit to you, and certinaly not bad design.
I don't nessesarly disagree with your opinion on graffiti etc. but I do dissagree with you reasons for them.
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.
What if you had never used a typewritter before?
:)
That's my point -- I hadn't.
And the fact that you choose to use a keyboard over handwritting seems to suggest that learning a new UI was acctually of benifit to you, and certinaly not bad design.
Absolutely. It also was beneficial to my teachers, who no longer had to try to decipher my heiroglyphic-like scrawl.
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
Not at all. QWERTY wasn't designed to slow down exactly, it was deisgned to be spaced out so keys close together didn't jam. Yes that did slow it down a bit compard to alternatives. But it's still faster than an alphabetical layout that you wouldn't need to learn.
Not to mention that his point was probably aimed more at the keyboard it's self and not the nessesarily the layout. Regardless of layout, you still have to learn how to type if you want to construct a sentence in a decent amount of time.
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.
My Dell Axim can do that! It has Pocket PC 2002 and it includes a program called "Transcriber" which allows you to write in cursive longhand and it recognizes it an inputs it into your document. It has about a 90% recognition factor at what I have it set for. You can set a slider bar to choose faster or more accurate. I can just fly on it. It's way faster than "jot" (which is also included). If you want it will also recognize individual block letters,or printed letters, or cursive letters, or mixed in any combination. You can even put in math and it will recognize it. Here is a page on it.
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.
wrong! Tools should be efficient, if that involves some training for the user... fine. Why should you be able to do something you've never done before in a way familiar to you... it's an unfamiliar task, then it's an unfamiliar tool, you will have to learn how to use it.
Should a screwdriver have to use a hammer's interface because the hammer interface is intuitive because it's ALREADY learned? Should the hammer not have a handle and instead use the interface of the pounding rocks that preceded it?
How do you improve tools if you can't optimize the UI for the task and instead have to optimize it to avoid learning. If the learning is costly, at least the cost stops when the learning is accomplished and the result is an efficient tool. If the tool is not optimized for it's purpose, then you continue to pay for that loss of optimization forever, and eventually it will be more costly than having the user learn the task and method at hand.
Of course you should use known metaphors, and use real world tools and metaphors, but in the end we want the best tool, we are tool building. Tools are not automatically bad because they require knowledge or expertise to apply. In fact, the best tools, the most powerful tools, always do involve learning the tool itself. The interface needs to seem convienient once you have learned it, not before so.
I think you are mistaking a marketing imperitive and marketing principle for an engineering principle.
As for Newton's handwriting recognition... it's so unbelievable I think I might have been trolled! Not the Newton's I used...
-pyrrho
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
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
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.
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 :)
Speaking as a parent of three children, I'll point out that suckling is, in fact, an instinctive action. Now, the parent often isn't up to the task at first, and you do get some babies that won't latch properly, or the mommy has inverted nipples or the like, and therefore a good flow can't develop, but in general, it's instinctive.
Ever watch somebody pick up a newborn and snuggle it, and the newborn starts rooting, and will latch on to the first patch of bare skin it finds? Or how if you stick the tip of your pinkie finger on it's lip, it'll try to latch and suckle?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Graffiti wasn't released as a replacement for handwriting recognition, which was pretty bad on all devices in the mid 90's. Graffiti's idea was to limit the acceptable characters so they must be drawn in a certain way - not really as letters in all cases - to minimize the computations required to figure out what letter the user just "wrote". The handwriting recognition on Newton was limited in quality by the CPU power you could get in a mobile device and keep it affordable (and not be a power hog). Graffiti was another approach to the problem of user input, as an alternative to HWR, not an enhancement. Early reviews were skeptical that it would be successfull since you had to learn a new way to write.
Now that CPU power has vastly increased in mobile devices, full fledged handwriting recognition is much more feasible.
Well, yes. If you want to be particular, Graffiti was a replacement for the keyboard application as it's not possible using the publicly available NewtonOS APIs to replace the underlying HWR engine.
Full fledged HWR is feasible now. It was even feasible at the time of the MP2k in '96,'97. Graffiti is still nice to have, though, as it makes a better keyboard app than the keyboard app.