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."
so long, farewell (Score:5, Interesting)
I finally learned, and got rather proficient at it. The breaking point was when I started to write on paper using graffiti. It was then I realized how dependant I was on it.
People don't want Graffiti, Jot and so on (Score:4, Interesting)
Now hold on a sec - those of us SlashDot faithful are not representative of the average Palm user. But if you look at your sister or boss or the guy on the train, very few of them like or bothered to learn Graffiti.
Oh well.
Re:Why remove code? (Score:5, Interesting)
they either have to pay lots of money or remove the feature entirely.
This is not by choice, they are being forced to do this.
I suspect that a public outcry is in the works... (Score:5, Interesting)
I realize this is different because it is a legal switch rather than a "taste" switch. But that may give the public all the more reason to protest the change. Will people really give a darn? I wonder.
--naked [slashdot.org]
Mandatory Reference (Score:5, Interesting)
Graffiti never held a candle to the Newton's handwriting recognition. I know; I used both.
The Newton recognized my handwriting, something that my wife rarely does. I use Graffiti on my Handspring Visor now, but I really miss my Newton. Well, actually, it was the taxpayers' Newton, since testing it was part of my campus job.
Just the same, I have to wonder if the legal eagles haven't killed another good product with their new emphasis on IP issues. Graffiti wasn't the best, but it was good enough for what I have to do.
What is Xerox going to do with it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pentagon Seeks Robots-Prize is $1 Million [xnewswire.com]
ga! grafiti is so so so much better (Score:4, Interesting)
That, and all my profs have learned to read grafiti, er, my handwriting.
It's a good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
The only difficulty I've had with Jot is getting it to do the underscore properly. But othe
What about PocketPC's? (Score:4, Interesting)
Computers Teaching UI to Humans = Bad (Score:1, Interesting)
When *consumers* have to learn a new language just to be able to use a consumer device, that's just downright brain-damaged.
And don't tell me computers can't recognize handwriting. The ortiginal PDA, Apple's overpriced Newton, could not only read plain handwriting, it could interpret it. You would scribble: "Meet with Bob Friday" and it would find all the Bobs in your addressbook, ask which one you want, and confirm that you meen the next forthcoming Friday.
Years later the Palm can't even read plain ol text?
Oh, and Mac OS X 10.2 can read plain handwriting too. What is it about non-Apple products that make them so incapable of working for humans, instead preferring making humans work for them?
One would think that by now somebody would have figured out a way to do it for a consumer-priced device.
Re:Don't toss out those spray paint cans yet... (Score:2, Interesting)
Graffiti is definitely not all it's cracked up to be (at least for me) while I can write the graffitis fast enough, I find it extremely disconcerting to write characters on top of each other: it goes against many years of learned behaviour (handwriting) and for this reason I don't think it'll ever feel natural. I also read somewhere an article that was talking about exactly this phenomenon.
In my opinion there is no reason for graffiti/graffiti-like stuff to exist: for pdas use a Qwertyish keyboard (on screen or hardware) for tablet PCs just use standard handwriting recognition software.
Re:How do I "Jot"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, I got spoiled with the Newton. Don't listen to the detractors, they probably never used a late-model Newton for any length of time. Once it learned (!) your handwriting, it was all gravy. That thing kicked some serious butt. I used a MP2100 for years, then had to join the rest of the world with a Palm-OS piece of junk. There's nothing as elegant as the Newton interface today. Freaking work of art.
Well this sucks. (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, If Graffiti can be sued, what stops xerox from suing CIC for their Jot character recgonition? especially when unistrokes looked nothing like graffiti and still won.
Re:It's a good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Many say that JOT is slower than Grafiti and they have a point. A well-practiced Grafiti user will outpace a well-practiced JOT user every time... but the number of well-practiced Grafiti users I know can be counted on one finger. All the rest use the on-screen keyboard instead. But every person I know who installed JOT uses it daily.
with the exception of (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:People don't want Graffiti, Jot and so on (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Computers Teaching UI to Humans = Bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, and remember when your teachers MADE you write in a certain way? Bet you hated it then and don't do it now...
Boy do I miss my newton!!!
Re:How do I "Jot"? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look at the character chart [cic.com], every Jot character except "X" has a one-stroke equivalent (in fact, only "I", "J", and "T" have a two-stroke varient).
Certainly modifying grafitti so that "X" is two strokes would not have been sufficient to fend off the lawsuit, right? So what gives?
Rats.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Was Inkwell even considered? (Score:1, Interesting)
Keyboards are obvious, Graffiti is not (Score:3, Interesting)
The other is a Graffiti pad and a stylus. They try what seems natural and start writing letters. Oops, some work, some don't. Hmmm, what's going on.
That's why, although people may not know the "proper" way of typing, they can still use a keyboard. You may not be as efficient, but it still works. With a Palm and Graffiti, you must learn to remember the Graffiti keystrokes to even get it to work.
Re:slashdotted server already (Score:3, Interesting)
I also remember something from my old Palm V manual about "if you have trouble making certain characters, try writing them backwards (mirror image)" or words to that effect. Sure 'nuff, most characters and numbers can be written that way as well.
My big gripe with Graffiti was that the cut-and-paste commands were easy to botch. I lost data several times because I overwrote the stuff I was trying to copy with a capital 'C'. If you didn't realize right away or the data was too big to undo -- oops! And with PalmOS, it's not like you can quit without saving.
Re:Mandatory Reference (Score:4, Interesting)
To be completely honest, I prefer Grafitti. I'd prefer it even more if
I could write anywhere on the screen (as Jot allows), but then again
I think the Grafitti pad is nice in that it cuts down the wear on the
screen.
The problem with the Newton engine is that it took ages to tune
it so that it was comfortable. Even then, I found I had to adjust my
own writing... bigger, more deliberate scribbles, for example. And
trying to actually take notes when it mattered or convert them later
was just too much twiddling around. The handwriting recognition worked
well when it worked, but it was just an incredible bother to get it
that far.
The Palm concept is simple, cheap, functional and (in my opinion)
disposable. Grafitti fits well with that model. I imagine that Jot
fits even better.
c.
Re:I LOVED Graffiti! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, he is not kidding. What Palm did, and Apple didn't do, is find out what people actually wanted, rather than what people thought they wanted.
Apple listened to what people said they wanted, and went for zero training over accuracy. Palm figured out that accuracy was way more important to people, even though people said otherwise.
Palm was and is far superior to Newton and PocketPC in almost every way that is actually important to people. PocketPC has been able to somewhat overcome that by massive marketing. Apple didn't have to resources that Microsoft has to market past the fundamental flaw of not really understanding the customer, so Newton never took off.
Why don't they fight it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Palm using Graffiti goes way back to the early nineties. One would think that they would have no problem proving prior art.
-- Len
Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. They blew the case. (Score:5, Interesting)
thanks for the link. (Score:5, Interesting)
The patent you point to does not look like something that graphiti would infringe on because graphiti is not rotationaly independent and graphiti uses a seperate area for numerals. Suppose this and other reasons are why the case was tossed out?
In any case, the patent itself is broad and very late. The referenced material dates back to 1982 and we can be sure that there was plenty of prior art. Yes, this is essentially patenting all styles of handwriting that might be easy for a computer to read. The same things make hadwriting easy for people to read as well. The is why most alphabets are mostly rotationally independent and involve as few strokes as possible. If Palm was ugly enough to keep others from using graphiti type systems, they deserve the same treatment, but it all goes to show how silly patents have become.
I'm going to miss graphiti as the replacements, short of a keyboard, just don't work. As Xerox managed to NOT file until 1997, it will be a decade before others may use this without paying Xerox a fee. I hope Xerox will be reasonable, ten years from now voice recognition will be good enough on portable devices and graphiti will be worthless.
Graffiti UI issues (Score:3, Interesting)
In UI design, just as in engineering, we have trade-offs. You let something give in one area to get something in return. Palm's design had to use grafitti because it was the only way to create a device that was capable of fitting easily in your shirt pocket and running on batteries for entire month(s) (a Palm back then with a 200mhz CPU like the one in my zaurus would have been like carrying around a brick). People seem to forget that how people interact with hardware UI is just as much part of the user experience as how they act with the software UI. This is doubly true for a device that is carried around as opposed to one that sits on your desk all day. In fact, the creator of the Palm, Jeff Hawkins, did something that few PDA creators actually do: he shaped a block of wood (i.e. made a prototype) that would easily fit into the pocket and from there built up the model of user interaction with the hardware by carrying the thing around to meetings and writing on it (that's how he came up with grafitti). Any good UI design person will tell you that you should design the interface before you start designing the technical stuff (as opposed to grafting it on last as 'a testament to modularity'). I really wish that designers of mobile devices took half as much care designing their products as Jeff Hawkins did with the original Palm.
While the Newton was a great idea, it was somthing that didn't easily fit into the pocket. I had heard rumors that mac journalist Andy Ihnatko actually created a "holster" so that he was able to carry the Newton around with him whereever he went; if that isn't a great example of a human being forced to adapt to clunky technology, I don't know what is.
But your are completely right to criticize grafitti in this day and age. Palm processors have gotten faster and memory has gotten larger, yet none of these resources have been used to make Palms handwriting recognition any more accurate or Grafitti any more humane. For crying out loud, the next generation of mobile devices will have 400mhz StrongARM processors; before we use this all this power to do multi-media this and wireless connectivity that, we should make sure that people have the ability to easily write stuff into their PDA's.
Re:I LOVED Graffiti! (Score:2, Interesting)
If someone told you "write the alphabet using one continuous stroke for each letter" you would pretty much just write the Graffiti characters w/o having ever seen a Palm.
I wonder what Jeff Hawkins thinks about this? (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, I would love to see a Slashdot interview with him on this very topic. I like the thumbboards, but I find that I can't touch type on them yet, which makes it hard to write notes and pay attention to the person that I am listening to (in a meeting, for example). That's why I loved Graffiti.
Don't get me wrong, Jot isn't bad, but I actually like having single strokes for common letters (read: I don't want to two strokes for K, T, etc.).
You know... (Score:2, Interesting)
The idea is simple: you have an on-screen keyboard with letters grouped together. ABC, DEF, etc. You tap the button that has the letter you need on it, then the next, etc. As you go along, the Avigo references a dictionary and the context to try and figure out which word you're typing from the combination of letters. I found that about 90% of the time, its guess was right-on with what I was trying to type. And when it wasn't, the alternatives were listed right on-screen, so all I had to do was tap.
It's a shame that Palm et al haven't implemented something like this on modern handhelds. The Avigo had very little power, very little memory, and it managed to pull off word-recognition really well. It was a lot faster than Graffiti, and a lot more accurate. C'mon, Palm! You need something to propel you ahead of the PocketPCs, and this is it! Give the people something faster and more accurate than scribbling on a plastic screen for God's sake.
Re:PDAs are useless (Score:2, Interesting)
I own an pocket pc... (Score:2, Interesting)
Grafitti-like
The recognition is not much better than on palm's grafitti, but pocket pc's recognition is software based, inthat, instead of that box at the bottom of all palms where you have to write, pocketpc can hide that box whenever you want, just by hitting a button. I get about 70-80% accuracy with the grafitti like system(lifting your pen off the surface can can make unwanted letters to popup). This is the best system to use for me.
Freehand Recognizer
As part of that freehand input, you can run a notepad like program in pocketpc, that lets you write on the screen, and then "recognize" your handwritten notes. Very cool, but not all that useful, about 50% accuracy (not worth using regularly).
QWERTY Keyboard
Pocketpc also uses that software input box for a keyboard that is quite useful to use. Not as productive as a full sized ofcourse, but decent typing can be done by hunt-and-pecking. I would say about 85% recognition, but it is slow, accurate, but slow.
Transcriber
I have a third option for my pocketpc. Transcriber is a microsoft program that lets you write in free hand on the screen and takes it as any other input(similar to notepad,but usable in any program). It is more of a novelty than an utility as regocnition for it isn't great, but the program idea is quite cool. Around 60-70% worth using, neat to have, but a novelty.
Re:I own an pocket pc... (Score:3, Interesting)
I see your keyboard has recognition problems too :-)
Seriously, though, I use Transcriber all the time and I rarely get a problem with it. It's far quicker than the letter recogniser, and on the odd occasion where it refuses to read the letter that I put in, I tend to use the onscreen keyboard. Have you been through and 'trained' Transcriber (selected the relevant character styles)? That makes a big difference.
My wife is a primary school teacher, so is very precise with her character forming, and has so far got near enough 100% accuracy whenever she's played with mine (ooh err).
Handwriting recognition was always too slow (Score:1, Interesting)
Check out the videos
http://fitaly.com/imagevideo/dpvideo.htm
winners in were near or over 80wpm