Found Footage: Visual comparison of InkWell to Vista's handwriting recognition

Thanks for the great work! Very helpful to see how they work.

Thanks for the great work! Very helpful to see how they work.

I have a wacom graphire, and I use it for ink once in a while when I don't feel like typing. The handwriting recognition sucks. Random letters get capitalized, words have spaces in the middle sometimes, and most of my a's come up as x's. Also, it's a royal pain to delete a long word with the tablet unless you're working in the ink pad, because the delete gesture can only do one character at a time.

I've used newtons and had better luck, which is amusing because everyone says they died because of terrible handwriting recognition.

Pretty fair comparison, maybe even a little to nice on OS X. I have used a Vista Tablet before, it works very well, much better then Mac OS X (with a tablet) but then again, it was the same laptop that reminded me why I converted to Mac.

If we get an Apple Tablet, something I want, then they better fix it up the software first.

This would really interesting if it were a 3-way comparison, Inkwell, Vista and the 10-year-old Messagepad (Newton). I've used both Inkwell and Newton, and I've tried out the handwriting in Vista. Vista is definitely better than Inkwell, but in my opinion the Newton was better than both.

It's important to note that what we have in Mac OS X is *not* the same as what was in Newton. Inkwell specifically does not support cursive, as can be seen in this demo, but the Newton really excelled at recognizing cursive especially after it had learned your writing (I'm not sure that Inkwell can learn).

Well let me say this!
I built an iTablet a while ago and have been using a PC Tablet now for years
So I think I have some experience
Is it a fair comparison
Not really
The Input Panel in Vista really is very good
Pen input is integrated into to the OS
inkWell has always been somewhat of on after thought for Apple
inkWell does work and you can use a pen as input for most of your doings
I had used it for a number of years and it does work! (I didn't write any novels but did all of my correspondence with it)
So from my experience
I still would rather use OS X with inkWell rather than Vista

I think they both were fairly decent. I wouldn't really say one was better than the other. I, personally, think that a good ol' qwerty keyboard is the best way to interface with a computer :D

@3, having a recognizer that is able to recognize strokes "out of order" is quite powerful. I didn't show it here, but it enables you to make corrections by overwriting letters out of order. That's quite useful when you're writing fast and need to make a quick edit. Example: You're currently handwriting the second of two words and then you realize that you didn't cross a letter T in the first word. If stroke order is used primarily then the recognizer will probably see the correction stroke as something that belongs to the second word or even a separate third word. Using spatial relationships can avoid this misrecognition.

Similarly, a recognizer that can handle spatial relationships is quite useful when processing blocks of handwritten text such as bullet lists or even mutli-stroke shapes.

Maybe I should put together a demo that compares more complex handwriting samples.

WHY WOULD YOU WRITE WORDS OUT OF ORDER?!

This guy is an idiot.

Both systems seem a bit of a wash to me.

Clearly this is a chief reason the Tablet PC concept has a very narrow focus - using checkbox programs in vertical markets.

Text input via handwriting is difficult enough even sitting down with a good quality Wacom, let alone perched on a Starbucks table on a frictionless screen (writing feels better on paper because of the friction).

QWERTY keyboards will be with us for some time to come, and even though it's mostly a myth it was invented to slow typists down (it was actually to stop the hammers of frequently chorded letters crossmingling on mechanical typewriters and proved the most efficient layout of the day amongst numerous competitors) very few people are slower on a keyboard than writing longhand.