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New Touchscreen Technology Like Writing On Paper
An anonymous reader writes "A company claims it has the technology to make writing on touchscreens more like writing with pencil and paper, when the harder you press the thicker the line you produce. The technology uses a material called Quantum Tunneling Composite (QTC), the resistance of which is extremely sensitive to pressure, unlike today's touchscreen phones, which might be fine for basic finger-pointing, but they are poor at gauging the pressure of the touch. The hope is that this will be useful in Asia for handwriting recognition, because Asian scripts use a lot of variation in line thickness. Interestingly, screens with a standard 2D touch matrix can get the extra measure of control using a narrow strip of QTC down the side."
Etch A Sketch.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I'm in line at a store and I see someone ahead of me jamming the stylus frantically into the signature pad, as if pressing harder will somehow make the pad sense the stylus better. The pad is broken precisely because dimwits keep stabbing it so hard!
Hey, back in the days, I forget about when, the monkey took a lot of flak for posting certain types of stories.
Anyways, for what it's worth, I find the monkey's story selection has been consistently good - interesting and relevant "news for nerd" - unlike those by a certain other picker who will remain nameless (starts with "sam").
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I was just having a cigarette today and a bunch of our graphic designers where talking about how they would immediately buy an ipad if it had a screen like this, but as is they where skipping.
You mean, something I won't be able to do legibly?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I seem to remember Wacom tablets having this kind of feature for a long long time... granted, the texture wasn't paper-like, but you could replace the 'nibs' or the ends to change the drag-feel of the stylus on the tablet. Best of all, no batteries for any of the devices - the tablet drove them with power provided as long as they were within a quarter of an inch of the surface. How is this revolutionary?
Not all Asian scripts are the same. Asia covers a very big area, from Saudi Arabia till Japan, and from Russia to India.
I don't understand why would ppl want computing applications in terms of thickness
...iPad Pro.
The first iteration is geared around media consumption.
Perhaps a second line will integrate technologies like this for media creation.
Either way expect something like it running Adroid.
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
What would we use it for, here?
Cursive writing programs are being eliminated from elementary school.
The quality of printing is also going downhill.
Everything here is being replaced by a keyboard (real and virtual).
Is this a technology that will see a major uptake only in a limited part of the world, amongst those who have trouble writing Pinyin(or similar)?
(But it would be great to have this sensitive enough to use a real brush to paint in digital ink.)
No pen.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Oh wow, you are trolling, yet opening a very interesting subject. I'm in!
Chinese characters do not unambiguously indicate their pronunciation, even for any single dialect. It is therefore useful to be able to transliterate a dialect of Chinese into the Latin alphabet, for those who cannot read Chinese characters. However, transliteration was not always considered merely a way to record the sounds of any particular dialect of Chinese; it was once also considered a potential replacement for the Chinese characters. This was first prominently proposed during the May Fourth Movement, and it gained further support with the victory of the Communists in 1949. Immediately afterward, the mainland government began two parallel programs relating to written Chinese. One was the development of an alphabetic script for Mandarin, which was spoken by about two-thirds of the Chinese population; the other was the simplification of the traditional characters—a process that would eventually lead to simplified Chinese. The latter was not viewed as an impediment to the former; rather, it would ease the transition toward the exclusive use of an alphabetic (or at least phonetic) script.
By 1958, however, priority was given officially to simplified Chinese; a phonetic script, hanyu pinyin, had been developed, but its deployment to the exclusion of simplified characters was pushed off to some distant future date. The association between pinyin and Mandarin, as opposed to other dialects, may have contributed to this deferment. It seems unlikely that pinyin will supplant Chinese characters anytime soon as the sole means of representing Chinese.
So, they once wanted to modernize everything and emulate the westerners, but now they want to protect their own identity and culture. Their way of writing is not worse or better, it is simply different and based on other principles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_written_language
The real issue with writing on a screen is that it slides so damn much. Give me some miracle surface that allows for some friction while still being easy enough to glide with fingers.
So it still won't be any good if I want to write while sprawled out on the floor, or on the bed... the pencil always goes through the paper.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Although this might be very old news to secretaries and office workers.
Accelerometers already sense when the device is being thrown, now with the pressure sensitive touchpad, the device is finally fully luser-ready.
I'm with Apple on this one.
...Slashdot's most trollish editor, goes to:
KDAWSON
Hands down. Seems like 75% of the crap stories I get suckered to by a biased headline are posted by kdawson. No doubt he gets you the pageviews, but.. its still annoying.)
How is this not like the wacom tablet I already have? It is very much pressure sensitive. Also, pencils do not produce significantly thicker lines when you apply more pressure. You can draw a faint line, a regular line, and break the graphite, but that's about it.
or else!
.....and a few million dollars in research funding we'll have a product that's almost as good as paper.
This is better than Wacom because you get all this extra sensitivity without the pen. It's easier to manufacture and something they didn't mention, which seems possible to me, is flexible touch displays in the future due to this screen type not needing an air gap to function. This is about so much more than writing.
That reply was awesome. Thanks. Related:
http://xkcd.com/406/
... you can make a big ol' permanent dot.
Hey this paper stuff sounds pretty good. I might have to go get me some and try it out.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
...because pressing harder with a pen or a pencil doesn't produce thicker lines.
Their [ideogrammatic] way of writing is not worse or better, it is simply different and based on other principles.
This is unambiguously false when measured by utility. Ideogrammatic scripts take longer to learn, are slower to read and write, and mostly convey no information on pronunciation. There are numerous studies (child development, comprehension timing, etc) if you're curious about this topic. Why they persist is an interesting historical question, but there were several strong movements to eliminate them for both Chinese and Japanese in the 1860-1960 period.
Unfortunately, Quantum Tunneling Composite requires massive amounts of Quantonium - which is mine - ALL MINE. mhua ha ha haaaa - cough. Galaxar out.
...as that's exactly what people seem to be missing here. The Wacom drawing/writing tablets aren't pressure-sensitive in the surface, but in the pen. Huge difference - unless you want to graft the little Wacom pen nibs and internals onto your bones and protruding from your fingertips.
And support the Scifi channel.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
All right. Fair comment. A phonetic system is definitely much quicker and brings a higher level of literacy sooner than an ideogrammatic system.
However, the Chinese speak three mutually unintelligible languages--Cantonese, Mandarin, and Manchu--but they all use the same characters. In addition, there are numerous minority languages in China that have adopted the characters. Enabling everyone to be able to communicate with each other through the written language is no small feat.
With a phonetic system, they would have a lot of difficulties communicating between themselves. Maybe once mandarin is used unequivocally by all of their people, they'll be able to adopt hanyu pinyin.
For now, they are a challenge to learn and a beauty to behold.
Does anybody really think that a pencil makes a thicker line if you push harder on it?
Asian ideograms and Western calligraphy achieve thin/thick lines by rotating a diagonal tipped writing instrument. Again, you don't ever find a situation where you're supposed to push harder.
So what's this new tech actually for? Is it related to porn somehow?
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Tablet PCs Feed @ Feed Distiller
Unless I'm missing something, I can already do that with the Gimp on my laptablet. Laptoblet? Tablaptoplet? Taplaptoblet? You get the idea.
Just in case I wasn't that clear. The ideogrammatic system might say, for example, that &?& = Dog. So, independently of the language you speak in China, &?& means dog. With a phonetic system you would have three different words and nobody would understand each other.
I've seen this implemented already. I remember using Microsoft OneNote on the earliest of tablet PCs and found how nice it was to have the software, either OS or program-based I'm not sure, recognize the pressure and feed back a pencil-like feel. It also changed the darkness of the mark, not just the thickness. Same thing on the Wacom tablets. Very useful in Photoshop.
How solipsistic are Apple users? They pay $99 a year for the privilege of having an e-mail address at me.com.
Zing! Pow!
i read it the first time even though it isnt there :)
This could give a new twist to input devices, adding a new dimension to the interaction. Will be harder to show in video, and probably will need some training or adjustment, but possibilities could be as big as was multitouch alone.
And then there's written English, a non-ideogrammatic "phonetic" script that in reality conveys little/no information on pronunciation. Wherein lies the utility of that?
First of all, "Asian scripts" is a totally bogus term: East Asian scripts (Chinese and derivatives, aka CJK), which are logographic, has no relation whatsoever with other Asian scripts (e. g. Mongolian, Thai, Indic, Arabic etc.), which are alphabetic and very much related to non-Asian alphabetic scripts (e. g. Greek and derivatives like Latin).
Second of all, neither the CJK scripts nor the other Asian scripts has a stronger emphasis on line thickness than non-Asian scripts. Including line thickness as an additional parameter would certainly improve OCR for CJK, but no more than it would for any other script.
to put the QTC on the pen tip and leave the screen with ordinary touch sensation.
why does the screen need to be pressure sensitive? the primary application of this technology is for handwriting and sketching. Wouldn't it make more sense to add a spring for resistance and make the tip of the pen pressure sensitive rather then recreating the entire writing surface?
The so-called "ideogrammatic scripts" (not really true of Chinese) can express phrases that would be difficult/impossible to understand when spoken, because characters are less ambiguous than homophones, which Chinese has a lot of. That doesn't seem "unambiguously false".
An extreme example is the Chinese poem (Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den) that starts out "shi2 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi1" and continues in a similar manner. It's impossible to speak but quite possible to read.
Oops, I meant to say "ideogrammic", and also that the numbers represent the tones of the syllables: 2=rising, 4=falling, 1=level, for those who don't know.
Which is exactly why Italian English is superior. The violent pronunciation is reinforced by the nonverbal gesturing leading to an unmistakable communication of a wish to induce bodily harm.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
>> The hope is that this will be useful in Asia for handwriting recognition, because Asian scripts use a lot of variation in line thickness
Hmm, I get the feeling that this is 99% what a western company thinks they want in Asia, and 1% possibly actually desirable over here. I'm reasonably familiar with Chinese, Japanese and Korean and they're all happily represented by fonts with no line variation. Hand-painted calligraphy or some of the fancier fonts are about the only place I've seen line variation used.
I've also yet to meet a Chinese person (other than the older generation who very rarely use a computer) who prefers to input their Chinese characters by drawing them. For everyone I've met, from my wife, to her family, my friends, and my colleagues, they all prefer to input it as some form of pinyin (using latin characters), as it's not only faster but also because a lot of them have been doing it for so long they've forgotten how to write many of the characters (at least, without pausing to think about it). They also all use standard pens to write hand-written notes, which have, you guess it, no variation in line thickness.
There might be useful for other scripts I'm not so familiar with though (such as Thai or Arabic - although I bet they write their hand written notes with standard pens, too), although usually the markets the companies producing this stuff are after are those I've described above - China, Korea and Japan.
Citation needed (to the studies).
They definitely are not slower to read and I doubt the "write" part too. People do not read letters, they read patterns.
"Longer to learn" claim is interesting as it would seem to mean "harder to learn" and lower literacy rate, right? This is very untrue for Japanese.
BTW, the information in text on how to pronounce english is far from being sufficient to be understood. Otherwise there would not be pronunciations in dictionaries.
>>This is unambiguously false when measured by utility. Ideogrammatic scripts take longer to learn, are slower to read and write, and mostly convey no information on pronunciation.
Eh, you can usually guess how a Chinese character is pronounced. It doesn't look that way to English speakers, but it's true.
The main difference is if you want your written language to convey how people speak a word, or the word's meaning. Old English is unintelligible to us because spoken language changes over time. However, you can read pretty much anything written after 400AD in Chinese, since the written language has remained the same, with the exception of the abomination that is simplified characters.
There's actually a lot of utility in this. You can travel to areas where there are mutually unintelligible languages or dialects, and still be able to communicate using written language. If I know Mandarin, I can still write down directions for my Cantonese taxi driver, or communicate with Japanese and (to a lesser extent) Korean people due to the fact that the characters are the same across regional and national boundaries.
Characters don't work very well with computers though, meaning you have to go through the process of typing in the pinyin for a word and then picking out the right character that you want (since many characters share pronunciation, though less if you can indicate tone as well). However, you end up getting an entire word with one or two characters, so overall an experienced Chinese typist can probably write at around the same speed as an English one. Probably less typos, too.
The article summary is wrong, though. You don't necessarily have to have a pressure sensitive pad to write characters. My touch input for characters works just fine by figuring out what I'm trying to write, and replacing it with a or whatever instead. Typefaces are pretty much always going to look better than the kindergarten-type scrawl you get from touchpads when trying to enter characters.
When will bad hand writing be a thing of the past ????
Why they persist is an interesting historical question, but there were several strong movements to eliminate them for both Chinese and Japanese in the 1860-1960 period.
They persist for the same reason QWERTY keyboards and Windows OSs persist.
They are not the best, but they are the best known. The installed base of users is huge. It's difficult to become an accomplished user of a different interface, The infrastructure cost of changing is prohibitive.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
Stroke width varies with the amount of pressure you put on the pen? What? Stroke width varies with the angle and direction of the pen. One of the first things one is taught in calligraphy is that you should apply as little pressure as humanly possible, since stroke contrast is generated by the angle and direction of the pen.
A system that just uses pressure to generate stroke contrast would just trip me up, as I always write with a broad-nib fountain pen whenever I can, and I'm quite used to the way it works.
The Nintendo DS can also sense how hard I'm pressing the Stylus.
So the only thing new about this is the friction between the stylus and the screen?
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
The text isn't actually displayed on the page since it's apparently still under copyright, so if you really want to see it you'll need to check the history.
As another poster mentioned I am quite worried about the health safety of this product.
My impression is that the product includes spiked balls that are constantly pushed against each other (maybe even just from vibrations not just when touched). The spikes are if I understand correctly of nanoscale dimensions. So, these spikes will break off once in a while. Too often and perhaps the material won't work well, but even just a little bit and you now have microscopic spearheads that may likely penetrate any fabric and the skin. They could travel through the body. And they are electrical conductors, so perhaps they could short-circuit nerves even. Is anyone thinking about this at all?
Italian English is superior. The violent pronunciation is reinforced by the nonverbal gesturing leading to an unmistakable communication of a wish to induce bodily harm.
Actually the Look is enough.