Listerene wrote:

OR you could just give up on crippled technology and go with Windows 10
on an ink-suitable PC.

Sometimes, there's a reason that a product has an 85% market share. One
Note will easily do what you want.

The reMarkable tablet isn't crippled just overpriced. I have written on a surface it has a slick glossy frictionless screen which is not good for handwriting. The reMarkable doesn't have all the distractions of the surface, it doesn't do e-mail or web browsing it doesn't pop up reminders it just does one thing quite well. There are one or two things they could have done to make it better but they are working on it.

One Note is a mess, a flashy GUI with lots of features added just to tick boxes in the advertising feature list with no thought as to how they were going to work together, the tagging is a joke and with the free version you have to keep all your data on Microsofts server, no local saves. The non free version comes as part of Microsofts new rental office suite Office 365. Software as a Sentence.

I decided to give the iPad Pro and Apple pencil a try, and have had problems deciding on which app to use. One guy on Youtube seems to endorse every one of them as "best". Notability seems to be popular for handwritten notes, while GoodNotes, Nebo, and Notes Plus can convert to typewritten text. My handwriting sucks (is a combination of printing and longhand). Right now, I'm leaning toward finding the one with least lag time.

Jeffery Smith wrote:

I decided to give the iPad Pro and Apple pencil a try, and have had
problems deciding on which app to use. One guy on Youtube seems to
endorse every one of them as "best". Notability seems to be popular for
handwritten notes, while GoodNotes, Nebo, and Notes Plus can convert to
typewritten text. My handwriting sucks (is a combination of printing and
longhand). Right now, I'm leaning toward finding the one with least lag
time.

Jeffery, I would be surprised if there was much if any lag time on the iPad Pro. It contains a relatively powerful processor, and Apple says that it has designed the entire iPad Pro plus Apple Pencil system to avoid the sorts of problems, including lag, that were inherent in earlier iPads.

That said, I expect that any of Notability, Notes Plus, GoodNotes or Nebo would be good for handwriting recognition, with, as I've written elsewhere in these forums, Nebo the best - although not necessarily the best in terms of the other "bells and whistles" that you might need in a full-featured note-taking application. I recall that one or two of the applications have slightly different methods within the user-interface for converting handwriting to text, so if you can it would be worth investigating them all fully before you make a decision.

One caveat, however: again as I've written elsewhere, handwriting recognition is as yet an imperfect technology. So when I've written above "good for handwriting recognition" that is relative to how things were. I recommend not raising your expectations too high. (My own handwriting, is to say the least quirky: even Nebo can't always figure out my "y", "g", "q", "f" and "p" - I have to write quite carefully and modify my style to get handwriting recognition to work sufficiently to make it an efficient process. Nonetheless, I persist. And I do believe that using the iPad as a store for all my handwritten notes, even if not converted to text, is worth the effort - no more Post-Its floating around my desk!)

Latency is normally negligible in real-world use, but it can be slightly noticeable with some more fully-featured (and/or more poorly-coded) drawing apps.

https://www.imore.com/105-inch-ipad-pro-first-impressions-my-favorite-ipad-just-got-even-better

https://www.macworld.com/article/3267724/iphone-ipad/apple-pencil-lag-test-new-ipad-vs-ipad-pro.html

https://www.imore.com/my-97-ipad-2018-review-drawn-written-edited-and-produced-ipad

If that's something you're really worried about just wait (a month?) to see what arrives with the new iPad Pros....

I have taken the plunge and imported a Samsung Chromebook Pro from the US, with the hope that I could use it for taking handwritten notes.

It's still early days, but if anyone is interested, here's my mini-review about my experience of testing Kami vs. Squid for annotating PDFs with a stylus on it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/8mdkll/kami_or_squid_for_annotating_pdfs_with_stylus_on/

For this the CBP worked fairly well (in tablet mode), and it made reading and annotating more enjoyable and faster than using the keyboard, though the downside is that the comments and highlights are no longer exportable in a 'machine' readable form (e.g. pasting them into ConnectedText, as I used to).

But this has its benefits as well, as it forces me to summarise my handwritten comments as an additional reflective step, and be more selective about which quotes l choose to import into CT.

And of course I can still link to the marked-up PDF from within the CT page, to call it up, when necessary.

I expect that at least in part to boost developer enthusiasm at Apple's WWDC in 7 days Apple is planning to announce new iPad Pros at the conference. Last year's models offered improved 20ms touch latency as well as the doubling of the refresh rate to 120Hz, which made a small but noticeable improvement over the initial models, and writing is slightly faster than the best Surfacebook out there (currently the best non-Apple device in comparison).

The new iPad Pros are supposed to have faster processors (the 2017 ones were at least 25% faster than the previous models), and there are rumors of an updated Pencil as well, so I expect latency to be further reduced.

This may be a good thread to add information on the latest software update for the reMarkable tablet:
https://blog.remarkable.com/big-software-update-convert-handwritten-text-revamped-pdf-export-and-much-more-b4a0256c2cc4

Includes handwriting to text conversion and better PDF export, both of which have been discussed at this forum.

I expect my reMarkable to be updated in the coming days, I may report back after trying it out.

After a few months of using the Samsung Chromebook Pro with an EMR stylus (I even got an extra Staedtler Noris Digital Pen for it), I have to admit that it didn't turn out to be the digital paper panacea that I wished it to be.

Nevertheless, it did result in some changes to some of my practices.

The Samsung CBP became the main device for doing all my PDF reading and annotation, using the Chrome app / extension called Kami (which is my default PDF reader in Chrome as well). So handwriting works for that.

I have also started to use Google Keep more often, as it can be set as the default handwritten note-taking app on the Samsung CBP. You don't even need to log into the device, just open the lid, and there is a facility to launch Google Keep from the start screen on the go.

Google Keep has emerged as the main cross-platform solution to get my handwritten notes into my Windows laptop, my other Chromebook, and my iPod Touch (replacing the Boogie Board).

I was pleasantly surprised by the Google Keep iOS app as well, and I've even started using it for making todo lists (typed, not handwritten ones). I still use WorkFlowy for long lists, but Keep is better for isolated todos just for today, and having it easy accessible on the iPod is a bonus.

So Google Keep is essentially a syncing service and a collection and storage point for both handwritten and typed notes. I could also use it to capture URLs with the Google Keep extension, but I haven't got into that habbit yet.

Squid as a handwritten note-taking application is even better than Google Keep (in terms of latency and features), but it does not have a good enough automatic sync, so I use it less often for that reason.

I have also invested in Myscript Nebo to transform my handwriting into typewritten text, but it's been disappointing so far, as I found that I could type just as fast if not faster, even though I'm not a touch typist, which then defeats the purpose. But I need to spend a bit more time with it, as the diagramming feature looks kind of interesting, and it might be that I just haven't given it enough of a chance.

Otherwise the Samsung CBP is a lovely device. It's very slim, extremely portable, the screen is of amazing quality, and it's just as much of an Android tablet as it is a Chromebook.

Dr Andus wrote:

I have also invested in Myscript Nebo to transform my handwriting into
typewritten text, but it's been disappointing so far, as I found that I
could type just as fast if not faster, even though I'm not a touch
typist, which then defeats the purpose. But I need to spend a bit more
time with it, as the diagramming feature looks kind of interesting, and
it might be that I just haven't given it enough of a chance.

One advantage of handwriting that I think (I may be mistaken) has not been mentioned so far in this thread is that recent American neurological research is reported to suggest that writing by hand engages deeper levels of the brain than typing does. So (it has been suggested) even if handwriting loses you speed, but it may improve understanding and articulacy.

Hugh wrote:

One advantage of handwriting that I think (I may be mistaken) has not
been mentioned so far in this thread is that recent American
neurological research is reported to suggest that writing by hand
engages deeper levels of the brain than typing does. So (it has been
suggested) even if handwriting loses you speed, but it may improve
understanding and articulacy.

From my own experience I do feel that writing by hand is different from typing and yet again different from dictation (in terms of the quality of the required cognitive engagement), and I wouldn't be surprised if one day someone would prove that it affects the resulting quality of the text.

E.g. I find dictation more mentally exhausting (and won't do it when I'm tired) because I need to compose the text in my head before saying it, as opposed to just allowing the sentence to be formed as I'm handwriting it or typing it.

But I think my problem with Nebo was that it actually distracted me from the process of thinking, as I focused too much on the tool and getting the words spelled right etc. So it's a bit similar to the dictation problem, in the sense that it might be better suited for transforming a previously composed text into typed format, rather than writing from scratch.

Dr Andus wrote:

... I think my problem with Nebo was that it actually distracted me from
the process of thinking, as I focused too much on the tool and getting
the words spelled right etc. So it's a bit similar to the dictation
problem, in the sense that it might be better suited for transforming a
previously composed text into typed format, rather than writing from
scratch.

Yes, I agree. One of the pieces of advice I give to colleagues who say that they find dictating longer pieces difficult is to "write it out first" (even when dictating to a second human being). I'm always dubious of the quality of the output of those who say they can successfully dictate longer pieces ad lib.

Similarly, it would be terrific if handwriting recognition could be successfully applied "post-hoc" like OCR, so that one could consider what one was writing before one converted it to text. At least as far as my own handwriting is concerned, OCR does not work. But maybe one day...

I am writing several thousand words per day. Without a decent keyboard and touch-typing I'd be lost. Handwriting and dictating mean that the sentence has to be finished in my head before I start writing or dictating. Using my keyboard I can jump around at will in the words and sentences I type and add text, delete text or move it around. This way I can polish the text till I am satisfied. Imagine doing that with handwritten text. Dictation software such as DragonDictate allows me to mimick my typing method but jumping around in the text is cumbersome.
So: Three cheers for a decent keyboard.

Franz Grieser wrote:

Imagine doing that with handwritten text.

Franz, you sound like a proper millennial, if you don't mind me saying so :-)

Unfortunately I'm old enough that I don't have to imagine that, I can actually remember how that used to work.

First you write a rough copy by hand that looks like a mess because of the scratched-out words and sentences and handdrawn arrows connecting different sentences and paragraphs, and then you create a clean copy by effectively rewriting the whole text by hand, before you can pass it on to someone who can type it up for you on a mechanical typewriter.

School children still do this actually, where they haven't been forced to use a computer or tablet.

Dr Andus wrote:

Franz, you sound like a proper millennial, if you don't mind me saying
so :-)

ROFL
My son's a millennial.

Unfortunately I'm old enough that I don't have to imagine that, I can
actually remember how that used to work.

First you write a rough copy by hand that looks like a mess because of
the scratched-out words and sentences and handdrawn arrows connecting
different sentences and paragraphs, and then you create a clean copy by
effectively rewriting the whole text by hand, before you can pass it on
to someone who can type it up for you on a mechanical typewriter.

When I started working as a freelance translator, the first thing I bought from my first translation's fee was a computer (Amstrad Joyce, anyone remember?). No more electrical typewriters and tipp-ex.

Dr Andus wrote:

"2018 iPad vs. Acer Chromebook Tab 10: education showdown"

https://www.slashgear.com/2018-ipad-vs-acer-chromebook-tab-10-education-showdown-03525812/

Have we passed the gimmicky stage and arrived at usable handwritten
notetaking and stylus use that can be used as the primary way of
interacting with a device in real-life situations?

I didn't realise that this thread was prompted by the release of the Acer Chromebook Tab 10... So I've just come a full circle, as I took delivery of a refurbished one last week, almost exactly 2 years later.

My experiment with Samsung Chromebook Pro didn't work out, as it was too heavy for a tablet.

In any case, the apps are the same (Google Keep and Squid for handwritten notes) and Kami for reading PDFs. In fact I end up using the Tab more for the latter.

I was contemplating getting Boyue Likebook Muses, but there were just too many negative reviews around about it breaking down and it cost the same as the Tab.

So it looks like I answered my own question then - the Tab is the first device that actually now works as a decent handwritten note-taking device, though still not for everything. But even the Chrome OS keyboard's handwriting recognition has improved a great deal these last 2 years.

In hindsight I should have just gone for the Tab 2 years ago and would have saved myself some money and would have used it for the purpose that I needed it for.

Though I still enjoy using the Samsung for annotating academic PDF articles, where the Tab's screen is too small for the small print and detailed annotations.

(Software: iPadOS/macOS)

I recently acquired a second-hand iPad Pro, primarily so I could draw on it. But in actual fact, I’ve unexpectedly discovered the joys of handwriting on the thing! I use Notability on both iPad, iPhone and Mac, and the handwriting recognition is really very good indeed. Meaning I can take full advantage of digital text even though I’m handwriting.

Given that I’m also a touch-typist, I didn’t think that handwriting recognition had very much to offer. But the freedom of a pen (or rather, Apple Pencil) in one’s hand is extraordinarily liberating. Here you write some text; there you do a little diagram or drawing. I’d forgotten how much I used to doodle in my school notebooks. Also, just how much fun the sheer mutability of handwriting is - how easy it is to emphasise something, or draw little arrows to something else. After decades of touch-typing, the absence of linearity is positively heady!

#notability

Nebo seemed quite promising first. What I miss a lot is basic reorganizing of the text. You cannot move existing block of text up / down unless there is an empty space created beforehand (to fit into). Compared to Stylus Labs Write it rendres useless. I had another problem with capital B letter in Nebo that was not recognized correctly. They promised to fix it but later thay stated this is not correctible by AI... So I gave up. MS OneNote is missing the text editing features completely. Stylus Labs Write it great compared to the giants with AI.

As a matter of fact, handwriting takes much more time than typing on keyboard and I miss all the extra "organizing" features of note taking apps like Roam Reseach etc. So I use my MS Surface for occasional hand-drawing. There are extra problems on Windows OS with the stylus input that is very undevelopped compared to mouse input.

Petr

My experiences completely match Dr Andlus' (that writing works my brain differently than merely typing, and differently again from voice recognition, where I second guess what any audience unseen or seen is making of my words and what a clown I am to be dictating them out loud)

On iOS, I've found a couple of other interesting apps, which work as keyboard (and can be undocked to provide a floating, movable 'handwriting keyboard' panel to write in).

One is Mazec, which I've found very good, and has been around a few years. 'Handwriting' is another, which I've not dabbled with so much.

Notability allows you to select hand-written text on the page, and convert to text. I've found this quite effective, even detecting and handling non-latin writing systems.

The difference between the two approaches is that Notability lets you write anywhere on the page, whereas the 'keyboards' limit you to a set window.

There are two wild alternatives:

One is 'pen to print', which claims it can take a photograph of handwritten text, and convert it to typed text. I dabbled with this a little then realised my paper-based scrawl was a little challenging, as I'd end up writing at multiple angles around a page, not really helping it much.

The other is to go grab an Apple Newton Messagepad 2100. Still the best implementation of handwriting on screen I've ever used, and there is still a 3rd party tool around which allows you to connect to your Newton to pull text and notes from it - though in this day and age, there are certain hoops to crash through to get it up on your network and visible, and you'll forever have set of 4 AA batteries on charge (doubly so if you have a rabbit - they love the mains cables)

huvir wrote:

Stylus Labs Write is great compared to the giants with AI.

Indeed, Write is a gem.
iPad version was recently updated and Windows / Android update is coming too (I exchange with the dev from time to time)

FYI, Write is integrated with IQ (and IQO) Doc pane, so if you combine this with a sync service (such as Dropbox) your handwritten notes can be viewed and edited on both mobile and desktop
Details here:
https://infoqubeim.com/drupal5/?q=node/3457

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer