Somehow bring up the onscreen keyboard, Menu>Input method>Handwriting.

There are 2 ways one can set the HWR speed, and I am NOT sure which one takes precedent. You can either go into Control panel>Text input settings or Menu>Tools>Settings. I set them both to the minimum, to have the fastest interpretation.

Menu>Tools>Settings>Handwriting speed set to the lowest. This is the biggest counter intuition Nokia has done. minus means fast, the interpretation is eye-blinking fast, while plus means slow, the interpretation takes forever. I believe most people complaining about the handwritten recognition is poor because they probably set this damn thing to a 5+ and thinking that is the fastest! Anyhow, set it to the lowest, you would be surprise the handwritten recogn is better than palm! This is the biggest counter intuition I have ever seen.

Now you are ready to program your shortcuts for repetitive typings. There are at least Shortcuts (Western) and Shortcuts (Greek) and a 16 shortcuts each for a total of 32! You can have your tablets to remember 32 typings you always use, OMG!
Menu>Tools>Teach handwriting:
Input type: choose Shortcuts(Western),
Phrase> Edit: type the phrase you use repetitively, say, "Why are you so difficult?". Just type the phrase, no quotations
Pattern>Edit: draw anything you want except it CANNOT be similar to patterns that already exist, say draw a dumb triangle.

Bingo. From now on, everytime you draw that pattern, the dumb triangle, the phrase comes up nicely, be it xterm, web address, gnumeric or even maemo mapper!
Got to go now, very busy in cooking my 32 shortcuts and the re-discovery of handwritten recogn capabilty of the tablet. Try it, I was a palm user, and I said, the tablet handwritten recogn is totally not bad after adjusting the ****** handwriting speed.

Edit: BTW, even if you still "hate" handwriting input, you can still program your repetitive typing and just change the input from keyboard to handwriting to use the programed pattern, then change input back to keyboard. Try it, you can program a whopping 32 long commands for your xterm/web surfing or whatnots...

Example: a shortcut to go to a particular thread of iTT on your tablet:
make a shortcut for "http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=", type the shortcut and enter the thread #, you jump right to the thread without delay!

Edit:6/28/08: there are more shortcut tricks on thread #10.

Enjoy,

Edit: No wonder everybody is screaming and complaining, the handwriting speed is default to 5+, snail interpretation. Is Nokia/team on prozac? What would they think a snail slow HWR is good for the tablet? So, if you do NOT aware of the handwriting speed setting or never play with it, factory setting is 5+.

Edit 5/30/9 The default I notice today it is 3+, not 0, nor 5+ any more, so Nokia kind of agree with this post, I guess.

bun