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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!
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?
To format your hard drive, push this button. To cancel, push that same button, but with exactly 1.2 pounds of force.
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
That reply was awesome. Thanks. Related:
http://xkcd.com/406/
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.
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.
> 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.
Yes, but the marketing guy who wrote the blurb doesn't know that as he is only a twenty-something and so has never used a pencil.
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