[Maemo 5] HWR / Handwriting Recognition Possible?
 

Hi, folks,

Does anyone have experience with handwriting on the N900? Are we going to see enhanced HWR of the kind we saw with the neat Handwriting Calculator Nokia released (as a sort of demo / test) a year ago or so?

Significantly enhanced HWR would be a big draw on the N900 for me, as notetaking is one of the things I use small devices for the most.

Best,
Jon

Handwriting, please…
 

One of the things that I really like in my Nokia 5800 is handwriting. It’s the only input method that I use except for passwords. It’s really so much faster then any other way once you’re used to it.
It’s a pity that it was not implemented on the N900.
Anyone knows if Nokia is considering to implement it in future firmware updates?

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

they better do, or i `ll be pissed. really dont understand why they didnt include it, along with voice dial and caller announcment..

grrrrrrrr.....

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

well, on one hand, you say they already have handwriting recognition implemented - so it probably didn't have to be too complicated/expensive to port it.. this is in case the maemo 5 will be used on more than just of their phones (n900), or.........

according to maemo summit, maemo6 should move towards capacitive displays, which means no stylus and thus no handwriting recognition possibility..

bottom line is that, i think, they will add it to maemo eventually, if maemo6 will support resistive screens afterall, and more than 1 device with maemo will be in production (which they most probably will), then maybe, maybe...... you can see there are lots of 'if's :)

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

Handwriting really works well on symbian, and I guess that nokia should have the knowhow to pass it to maemo.
I really don’t understand this change to capacitive screen. Resistitive is so much better. It’s more accurate, you can draw, icons can be smaller and it’s getting more sensitive in every model that nokia releases. My Nokia 5800 has all the sensitivity that I need.
Apple people are good sellers and everything that they have is better. If they can’t run many app at the same time, it’s very good because your battery runs longer.
The way apple misses handwriting, is a major drawback and I think it could be a major advantage for maemo.
In the Asian markets this move will be even more incomprehensible, because handwriting it’s vital there.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

All Maemo releases before Maemo5 had handwriting recognition. It was simply bad.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

there was only one good handwriting recognition @OS2008

http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view...ing-calculator

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

I doubt that Nokia will drop stylus support even with a capacitive display.

As the Maemo platform already exists for quite some time there are many apps - besides handwriting reconition - which require the accuracy of a stylus. e.g. how should something like mypaint be moved ot a finger friendly UI?

It's not the same situation like when Apple did start the iPhone and didn't have to care about existing applications for the plattform, which might not work well without pinpoint accuracy.

And apparently it's possible to have a capacitive display + stylus. At least some days ago somebody posted a link here in the forum about a company which builds stilii? styluses? which are also working on capacitive displays.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

I think it's all a matter of parts availability.

If said hybrid resistive+capacitive display can be sourced in adequate quality & quantity reliably and at reasonable cost, then it'll go into the Maemo 6 device.

Otherwise, there's a chance that the initial Maemo 6 device will go capacitive-only, until said vendor can catch up for the next device.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

Don’t understand your point. Are you saying it will never work well in maemo so it’s better to give up. Why?

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

i can write by hand very fast. but on my blackberry i can type faster than i can write. plus my handwriting is pretty bad and i dont know how the recognition would go with that.
so im not to fussed if it doesnt have it on the n900.
though it will still be something id like to try

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

There simply is no decent HWR engine available for linux. The HWR on previous tablets was most likely a (badly) tweaked version of Decuma Alphabetic (my own guess, as Nokia never specified), but nothing like PenOffice exists for linux, which I'm using to write this BTW.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

I guess its like has been said before, the N900 is a geeks toy. Its not really at a state ready for the kind of people who are slower at typing than writing.

Anyone who is reasonably good with a keyboard will always be far faster with the keyboard than writing. Its only logical that moving a pen/stylus to make a shape takes significantly longer than tapping a button.

That said, I do think its a shame its missing. The point is that while Nokia clearly are not ready for average-joe to use the N900, it doesn't mean average joe will not look at the N900 and think badly of Nokia for it not being easy for them to use. If its available in the shops people will look at it, and they wont "get" that its currently designed to be a techie toy, they will assume this is the best Nokia can come up with.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

Given 1) move from stylus to finger although stylus remains for backwards compatibility 2) planned move from resistive to capacitive in N900 succesor & Maemo 6 3) lack of handwriting support in Maemo 5 and 4) quality of handwriting in previous Maemo versions (<= 4.1.2) I wouldn't put my money on assuming Maemo 6 will have good handwriting support. Even though we cannot be sure as of now, the facts we do know are not supporting such statement.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

not really, with handwriting and note taking, the words flow and you move faster and can explain more and emphasise things better in a few seconds than with a keyboard.
i took extensive notes at the maemo summit and think the information I will extract from them will be much better than anything I couldv written on any keyboard in the same time and ease.
also, note taking is less intrusive than using a keyboard and is done with one hand.
obviously for some people keyboards are preferred.


i agree, a decent hand writing recognition system would be good :)
"the best that Nokia can come up with"
a solid platform that has all the hardware needed to be a concrete reliable usable haven for open source collaboration and app building for years to come.
thats pretty damned good from where I'm standing.

it looks good, it operates well, its getting cleaner and cleaner every day.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

I think it’s a mistake to assume that you’ll need a stylus to do handwriting. I use my nail (and I don’t have long ones) to write. And I would not take for granted that geeks don’t know how to write with a pen.
I would give up the keyboard and the extra thickness on N900 for handwriting and a virtual keyboard. And please keep it resistive, it’s much better.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

drm,
bah i stopped finger painting a while ago.
even having a stylus implanted in my finger did not stop me from using a stylus for writing.

my fingernails are short and the precision is low and moving whole hand over to other side of the screen is actually tiresome.
i extend my fingers and stylus to write on the right hand side of the screen (I'm left handed), using my nail I would have to physically move my whole hand.
I currently rest my wrist near the lower left corner and can extend to the whole screen with only finger movements.

stylus writing ftw
finger friendly ui is also stylus friendly :)

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

I'm merging a crap phone, psp, palm t5, and my mp3 player into my n900

handwriting is single greatest thing on the t5!!

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

If the future N910 don’t have physical keyboard (I read somewhere that they will take it out), it should be even more necessary to implement the handwriting, it’s impossible to navigate on the web always changing from keyboard screen to web screen. The handwriting box it’s just a small rectangle and it can even be transparent.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

I read today on maemo-guru the above opinion (big buttons and no handwriting) that I hope will not be the future.

«One thing I’m known for saying about the Nokia Internet Tablets is that Maemo needs to decide whether it wants you to use the stylus or your finger, and stick with that. Neither choice is really good or bad, they both have their advantages and drawbacks.

If you’re one who, like me, thinks finger-friendly is the way to go, then I want to let you knoow something you can implement right nows that will make your entire tablet experience much more finger friendly. It’s a theme called EchoWB. This theme is visually identical to the Echo system theme save for one important detail – all the scrollbars throughout the whole tablet are wide enough to be finger friendly.

Such a small change, and yet I think you’ll find that it makes the entire user experience just a little bit better, being able to navigate better without trying to use your fingernail or pop the stylus out all the time.»

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

Also, good HWR (meaning fullscreen natural writing) is much more economical with the precious screen real-estate of a handheld. And let's not forget that handwriting, contrary to thumb-typing. does not screw up the hand-eye coordination: you always see what you're writing.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

as a left hander, I've always had the problem of overlaying stuff!
In my regular writing before I got the tablet, I would write in 4-5 inch columns anyway to reduce this.
replacing that page with the tablet was one of the most natural things I could do :)

frustratingly I have an extra problem - when I write with the device flat on the surface, I now sometimes write in portrait orientation - but because the device is flat I cannot use technology to store/retrieve the direction.

It will have to wait until I get HWR working to tell me which orientation the letters themselves have been written in and rotate sketches accordingly.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

For an at least marginally usable HWR engine for linux, you might take a peak at http://risujin.org/cellwriter/.

It's no Rosetta or ParaGraph, but it appears to work. Moreover, it's one of that rarest of breeds: an open source HWR engine...

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

Just lift it a bit to tell the direction ;) PS. Can't wait to try out your liqbase - a calendar with handwritten notes. Suits me.


I just bought my girlfriend a Nokia 5530. And I showed her in passing how she can input by writing with that little pen. And she absolutely loved it! Now uses it all the times.

Re: Handwriting, please…
 

karel, it shouldnt be changing its orientation just based on a little lift.
i sometimes write/draw in landscape and sometimes portrait and I switch between pages depending on what i am doing

the hwr will give me orientation of words on a page, so once thats working I will have this info anyway (and for drawings without I will have to store some setting)

kalle, yeah ill update the package soon, at the moment its lal in extras-devel and the version there is a bit borkened. now I am back from the summit, I just have one little app to do before I update everything.
karels, using grid entry isnt really ideal, I have spoken with AStorm extensively who is designing a cursive recognition engine and have my own ideas.

I certainly have an extensive training catalog - every word I have written on the screen in the last 18 months exists as vector strokes with full time stamping and even pressure info :)

i hope to find the time to build on the stroke recognition function I added and group the similar ones and just hopefully have very good capabilities.
(ie, theres a stroke it is used lots 80,000 "e", what ASCII character does it mean..)


theres technical considerations with putting the calendar as a standard desktop widget, but that can be sorted I'm sure.

Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

I'm new to these Nxxx-devices. Somewhere I read the N900 doesn't have handwriting recognition. Would it be possible to port it from Maemo 4? How likely do you think that is to happen?

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

I don't. The source code for the handwriting recognition is not available, so the onus would be on Nokia to do it. And they have chosen not to do so. Can't blame them, it wasn't really great in the first place and I do remember a fair few complaints...

The handwriting recognition is not fullscreen; it does run in a little window on the bottom of the screen. Which poses a problem as the Fremantle UI is not really tailored for stylus usage as such (the widgets are a lot bigger and a lot easier to hit with the fingers [they're also a lot nicer, too]). So if you copy the relevant files from a Maemo 4 device, it may work on the N900 but Stskeeps has a picture (somewhere) of the stylus keyboard copied from the N800 running on Mer and the result didn't look...um... shall we say... appealing.

Personally, I think helping the guy doing https://garage.maemo.org/projects/cellwriterhim/ is a better bet.

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

It (simpliWrite) wasn't even Nokia's IP in the first place, so the chances of it ever coming back are very slim.

Indeed.

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

This reminds me. Does anyone know of an OSS project reimplementing a Graffiti1-like recogniser?

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

Hm, THIS means Handwriting Recognition IS available on the N900?

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

Handwrite recognition for me it’s just the must amazing thing from symbian. All my text input (sms, net, calendar) is made with handwrite. I guess that if nokia is really committed to Maemo it must implement this amazing feature. If not it’s a huge step back for any symbian user. People speak of MMS and portrait mode but this is much more important. What’s the point of going to resistitive technology and not using handwrite?

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

NO. At least not by default and not by Nokia.
As written, **maybe** 3rd party apps can provide a similar functionality.

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

It’s not the same thing. It must be implemented in the OS for using in the browser and in the SMS.

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

Well, if it is implemented as a Hildon input method (or whatever is needed for maemo 6 then), it *will* be usable throughout the complete OS.

Re: Possible to port handwriting recognition from Maemo 4 to 5?
 

No, not really. It just must use the HIM interface to become available as input method on the device.

Handwriting Recognition App?
 

Is there any handwriting recognition app? So far the closest thing that I've found is Xournal but that does not recognize the hand writing but it is just good for scribing :)

Any suggestions ?

Re: Handwriting Recognition App?
 

afaik there isn't a techncal solution yet

Re: Handwriting Recognition App?
 

I am working (lazily) to add HWR to Xournal.. but it'll take sometime.

Aniello

Re: HWR / Handwriting on the N900?
 

I installed on my N900, but did not work very well.
We await the new version.

Re: Handwriting Recognition App?
 

WOW! great! To what extent is HWR after one month? :o