Palm Kills Off Graffiti 440
Ed writes "PalmSource, the company that makes the Palm OS, has decided to stop using Graffiti for text input in all future versions of its operating system. Instead, it will switch to using a version of CIC's Jot recognition system, which will be called Graffiti 2. PalmSource was forced to make this move after losing a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Xerox. Jot is already used by the Pocket PC operating system.
You can read more about it on Brighthand."
slashdotted server already (Score:5, Informative)
January 13th, 2003
When you think Palm, you think Graffiti. But Palm's long-standing association with its home-grown character recognition software is about to take a dramatic turn. PalmSource, the operating system subsidiary of Palm, Inc., announced today that future versions of Palm OS will not contain Graffiti. Rather, they will incorporate a modified version of Communication Intelligence Corporation's Jot handwriting recognition software, something it's calling Graffiti 2 powered by Jot.
The impetus for the switch appears to be legal rather than technical. In April 1997, Xerox sued Palm, claiming that Graffiti was essentially derived from its patented Unistrokes technology. Unistrokes, or "Unistrokes for Computerized Interpretation of Handwriting", as it is referred to in Xerox's 1997 patent, is a system of text-entry using single-stroke symbols for computerized recognition of handwritten text. However, it appeared Palm dodged a legal bullet when, in June 2000, a federal judge dismissed the case. But in late 2001, Xerox won a reversal in the U.S. Court of Appeals and the lawsuit was back on, and it's been hanging over Palm's head ever since.
CIC's Jot recognition software has long been found on competing handhelds running on the Pocket PC platform. As with Graffiti, its alphabet is based on block characters. However, unlike Graffiti, some characters require two rather than one stroke. Therefore, Jot characters more closely resemble common block letters than Graffiti characters. According to Marlene Somsak, Palm's VP of Communications, this will reduce the learning curve. "For new Palm users, Graffiti 2 powered by Jot is more intuitive and natural than Graffiti," Ms. Somsak told Brighthand.
Hints to Graffiti's demise began to surface last year, when Palm OS licensee Handspring said it was dropping Graffiti in favor of integrated thumb-type keyboards for its Treo organizers. And Palm itself announced in November that, for the first time, it was bundling Communication Intelligence Corporation's Jot handwriting recognition software with its upcoming Tungsten W handheld.
According to Lee Williams, VP of Engineering for PalmSource, the move to Graffiti 2 will allow Palm Platform licensees the choice of foregoing the silk-screened "hard" Graffiti area, since Jot can accept input from anywhere on a device's touchscreen.
According to Mr. Williams, Graffiti 2 powered by Jot will be a modified version of the current version of Jot found on CIC's website. It will be included in future releases of the Palm operating system, including the upcoming Palm OS 4.1.2 and Palm OS 5.2, and will be included in the Palm Developer's Kit (PDK) as part of a unified API.
How do I "Jot"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well, that's it for Palm. (Score:3, Informative)
slow and non-standard (Score:5, Informative)
Palm should have used something like Jot from the start, or they should have copied Xerox's Unistrokes better.
Here [yorku.ca] is some Unistrokes performance data showing it to be the fastest of the bunch. There are papers comparing Graffiti and Unistrokes directly, and, again, Unistrokes comes out way ahead.
Jot Usability? (Score:5, Informative)
How does the usability of Jot compare? Any ideas? Personally, if I am entering text, I like to use a thumb keyboard (e.g., Blackberry). One more thing, I guess that Jot 2.0 is available as shareware [palmflying.com]. It gets good ratings, but I haven't seen any "real" usability research.
QuickWrite was a good alternative (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wouldn't this be patenting the alphabet? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFPA (patent application). The patent is for "A machine implemented method for interpreting handwritten text..." in other words it is the method for reading uni-strokes that is patented, not the Unistrokes themselves:
The patent [delphion.com]
Jot is cool. (Score:4, Informative)
I found Jot much easier to use and learn than Graffiti and when people used my Palm they thought it was a lot easier.
Re:Well, that's it for Palm. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:slashdotted server already (Score:5, Informative)
I think there was some hackery around the X character in Graffiti. If you invoke Graffiti Help, you'll see that the official way of drawing it is as you described. Two strokes, top-left to bottom-right, top-right to bottom-left. But scroll down in the help to the extended shift page. Look at the multiplication character's stroke. Top-right to bottom-left. But the preceding extended shift stroke is top-left to bottom-right. And the resulting character isn't a distinct multiplication symbol; it's a lower-case X! Sneaky, eh?
For the record, there is a single-stroke X gesture. Just keep the stylus down between the two strokes of the "official" X gesture. Think of it as a lower-case alpha, or a sideways shortcut gesture. Either way, I found it easier than the two-stroke X, which I always slopped into "lower-case I, [CR-LF]"
Jot User's Guide (Score:3, Informative)
If there's a space in the URL, that's Slashdot's fault.
I wouldn't worry too much... (Score:5, Informative)
strokes for cursive (Score:4, Informative)
Quite a few printed letters we write every day require multiple strokes to write them cleanly and properly.
That may be true for printed letters, but among Latin lowercase cursive letters, the only ones that need more than one stroke are i (need the dot to distinguish ii from u) and t (crossed).
Other alternatives (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why don't they fight it? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why don't they fight it? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Was Inkwell even considered? (Score:4, Informative)
Strangely, I don't see why Palm doesn't have prior art claims (those apply in patent cases, right?) Graffiti was released as an enhancement to supplement the initially bad HWR on the early Newtons. I think it was available in '93 or '94 (though I don't know for sure.) Strange.
prepare to be educated... (Score:3, Informative)
What's more, Xerox received their patent in January of 1997 and started the suit against USR (who owned Palm/Graffiti back then) just 3 months later in April of that year (http://news.com.com/2100-1023-279360.html?legacy
So get off your high horse and blame Palm for knowingly using Xerox's work for 8 years (and dragging the suit out for the last 5 years!) instead. Put it in a different perspective -- when Microsoft stole Stacker's work and then delayed Stacker's lawsuit until it no longer mattered what the suit decided, did you blame Stacker for trying to quash MS's self-compressing filesystems long after the fact?
Re:Xerox patent on UNISTROKES? (Score:3, Informative)
Ob. Disclaimer: I am quite opposed to current patent law and its application in practice. That said, I feel the need to provide an alternative view to your knee-jerk rewriting of recent technological history.
Unistrokes was quite non-obvious when no one had actually done it yet. The entire field of handwriting recognition was relatively new. While many so-called "innovations" really do fail the non-obviousness test, this simply wasn't one of them. In this case, 20-20 hindsight blinds you to the novelty of the idea *before anyone had thought of it*. (Think about the design of the paperclip for a moment, if you don't get this.) Moreover, Xerox didn't just think of it, they researched the idea to show that their design actually made sense from an CHI perspective. Their work was quite innovative in that era's handwriting recognition research.
I have a hard time believing that the Graffiti devleopers didn't know about Unistrokes.
Published work on Unistrokes was readily available in conferences, journals, and online. Anyone doing even a minimal literature dive for handwriting recognition technology would have found the papers. Even if the work was independent and/or prior, there's at least some technical guilt for re-inventing a well-known solution. MS gets bashed for not-invented-here syndrome all the time -- why not Palm?
And remember -- half or more of the battle is in seeing past the now and into that first great idea. That this idea is amenable to a straightforward implementation is a *feature*, since it was aimed at low-power embedded devices.
You stipulate that Graffiti was "re-invent[ed] independently". Do you have any basis in fact for this statement, or are you just defending your vision of Palm as The Innocent Victim?
I mean, it's a little bit more complicated than using XOR to draw a cursor, but not that much.
You are clearly ready for the marketing department. "Oh, that's trivial! The engineering teams can do it in an hour or two, I'm sure!" The innovation here is NOT algorithmic, but rather in the design concept and how it dovetails with a user-interaction model and an efficient implementation.
Fitaly Tap Keyboard Better Anyway (Score:5, Informative)
The advantage is that the keyboard is designed to lessen pen (stylus) movement based on common words. It is highly customizable and supports international characters. shifting, special characters, etc.
I like it and it works for me. I won't miss Graffiti at all. Worth a look if you're interested in alternatives.
Re:Why don't they fight it? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Jot Usability? (Score:1, Informative)
Palm and Graffiti older than Pilots (Score:3, Informative)