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Taking handwritten notes on digital devices
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Posted by Hugh
Apr 5, 2018 at 01:39 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
Hugh wrote:
>I suspect that there are a number of pieces of hardware and quite a few
>>pieces of software that will support the use of handwriting.
>
>Yeah, but it’s one thing to “support handwriting” and another for it to
>**actually** work on a daily basis for real-life use in a satisfactory
>way, so one would prefer it over other input methods.
>
>Even the very first iPad supported handwriting, but the latency and the
>size of the resulting writing made it unusable for taking notes at a
>meeting for instance.
Agreed that latency and imprecision make use of a digital device for handwritten note-taking pretty much impossible. On the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, there is little or no latency and much-improved precision (for a price, of course).
It will be interesting to see whether that is true of the just-announced, less expensive iPad too. The specifications of the chip that it uses suggest that it may be.
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Apr 5, 2018 at 02:16 PM
Hugh wrote:
>Agreed that latency and imprecision make use of a digital device for handwritten note-taking pretty much impossible.
>On the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil, there is little or no latency and much-improved precision(for a price, of course).
Pen-enabled Samsung phone and tablets do not suffer from any latency. Neither do all Windows tablets I’ve tried (MS Surface Pro, Lenovo Miix 700, Acer R7, Asus T300CHI).
All great writing experience.
Pierre
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Apr 5, 2018 at 02:28 PM
Hugh wrote:
>But the real challenge, it appears to me, is to create software that will reliably and accurately convert that handwriting to text.
Not all handwriting need to be converted to text. A handwriting word processor is all about writing by hand and being able to do edits (insert / move text, reflow around page, images and columns, etc)
>Today, the developer MyScript has been in existence a relatively long time and seems to lead the field
I’ve used MyScript before, namely its Nebo app. It has the best handwriting to text conversion I’ve seen. But… as a handwriting word processor, it is quite poor, StylusLabs Write is much better.
> But even MyScript apps do not, it seems to me, match the accuracy of, say, Nuance voice-to-text
>In other words, when working on a medium-form or long-form project, if you want to convert handwriting to text, you can get a better result (i.e. a more efficient combination of accuracy and speed) if you write the text out by hand and then use voice-to-text software to convert it to hardcopy, than if you rely on handwriting-to-text.
Agreed 100% !
Pierre
Posted by Hugh
Apr 5, 2018 at 04:04 PM
At least recently, I haven’t used any Windows tablets, but otherwise I think I agree with all you’ve written above, Pierre.
Posted by J J Weimer
Apr 6, 2018 at 01:45 AM
I wonder why we have taken this long to finally get out of a caveman or kindergarten paint by hand on the wall mode. I have to think that Steve Jobs was too much of a perfectionist. The reason the iPads (and iPhones) never had a stylus was because the technologies to translate the precision and accuracy of a touch-screen such as the Palm to a capacitance screen such as the iPad were non-existent at that time. To heck that he said, no one needs a stylus. What he really meant was “We cannot make the iPad devices good enough for both a finger and a stylus, so we just won’t make them with a stylus (because no one _needs_ a stylus)”.
I would have killed for an iPad that recognized Graffiti input as per the Palm. This to me was the real market pull waiting to be recognized.
I use an iPad to mirror in an infinite whiteboard mode during my classroom lectures. It works well enough. I have gone through my share of different stylus inputs (rubber, mesh, and disc ... though not yet any of the “active” types). I tried the iPad Pro + Apple Pencil a few weeks ago. What an order of magnitude difference. I can see myself divorcing myself fairly soon entirely from pen + paper (and now not bothering with the “active” stylus devices for my current iPad).
The allure of the other OS tablets is not high for me. Good or bad, I am wedded to the Apple ecosystem and prefer it for other reasons, some subjective and some professional (due to the other types of apps that I use). That is not to say that I do not see and appreciate the advantages and oft better approaches of the other systems.
So, in answer to the opening question ... Have we passed the gimmicky stage and arrived at a usable [system] ... I would say ... Hell yes, and it is about time that we have!
—
JJW