It needs the absurdly large patern so that it can determine position data on each page and page number of the pad. If you designed a system that had no pattern, you would have to write in one continuous stroke, because as soon as you lift the pen, it looses it's place. Optical mice assume the cursor is in the same place when you lift the mouse, which makes it possible to "scrub" the cursor long distances across the screen.
However you could make it into a handwriting recognition thingie if you gave it the smarts to tell, or learn what strokes of the pen, in the context of previous strokes mean what charachters. It would be a pretty dumb system, with a lot of error, and would only be able to reproduce straght text, no pictures or layout, but it would work on any surface an optical mouse would work on.
CMU's ICES did something like this a few years ago, called digital ink. It used accelerometers and some other sensing gear to tell the actual postion and motion of the pen's tip. I don't know if they ever made a working prototype, but I assume that you would have to keep the paper stationary (Har- har!) or else as you walked across campus, the pen would think you were writing a really wiggily 382 yard long line. In three dimentions.
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It needs the absurdly large patern so that it can determine position data on each page and page number of the pad. If you designed a system that had no pattern, you would have to write in one continuous stroke, because as soon as you lift the pen, it looses it's place. Optical mice assume the cursor is in the same place when you lift the mouse, which makes it possible to "scrub" the cursor long distances across the screen.
However you could make it into a handwriting recognition thingie if you gave it the smarts to tell, or learn what strokes of the pen, in the context of previous strokes mean what charachters. It would be a pretty dumb system, with a lot of error, and would only be able to reproduce straght text, no pictures or layout, but it would work on any surface an optical mouse would work on.
CMU's ICES did something like this a few years ago, called digital ink. It used accelerometers and some other sensing gear to tell the actual postion and motion of the pen's tip. I don't know if they ever made a working prototype, but I assume that you would have to keep the paper stationary (Har- har!) or else as you walked across campus, the pen would think you were writing a really wiggily 382 yard long line. In three dimentions.