Is inking dead?
 

Souk's Slate thread got me thinking...

Quite a while back, Apple gave us the Newton. Which promised a slick way of entering text in a fast comfortable way. This is how that ended....

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For the past 5 years or so, I've been using inking on both my tablet PC and various Windows mobile cell phones. --it's been great!

The thing is, I'm seeing that the recent MSFT trend is to retire inking to the scrap-heap of history. That is, the new flashy "Phone7" doesn't offer inking, and more and more tablets are using the crude cap-sense touch screen input of a fleshy finger - the precision of a fat-tipped Magic-Marker.

Maybe Apple has the right idea; people don't really want to input much. ...their all just a bunch of finger-pointing consumption cows. (shrug)

Oh, and does anyone know if cursive writing is still taught in school?

Search for my thread a few months ago on cursive.

Problem is, people don't want to carry a stylus, which is always missing when you need it, and handset screen is too small to write on anyway. Everyone copies AAPL which is not interested in HWR apparently.

HWR is important for Asian languages, so the basic capability will be there. Question is if a third party app can get access to the algorithms for alphabetic HWR and integrate into the OS. HWR that is isolated in one app is not so useful. That exists already, not popular.

Interesting.

Every inking device I've had came with two stylus' . . .I've never lost one. Also, I find that, on my phones, I rarely use the stylus. I typically write using my finger - specifically I contact the screen w/ my fingernail; holding my hand over the screen much like a left-handed person writes on paper.

Anyway, I don't believe that the stylus (or the loss of) is the issue. I think that it's more that no one knows about it. I mean, WinMo had only 3% of the market (compare to 24% for Apple) And, of that 3% very few even know that the "transcriber" input choice exists. I also expect that quite a few are intimidated by the technology - thinking it's Apple newton error prone.

If only MSFT had some decent marketing. :-/

I will note, that the HP Slate has an interesting approach... They give the user options. They can use their finger for crude moves/gestures/input, OR, breakout the stylus, and the input mode switches to the precision of a pen. (pressure sensitive too, iirc -- sketching power)

As an input device, a pen/stylus has so many advantages over a fat finger. And, like you say, HWR is important for Asian languages.

Do you know if smart phones in Asia still offer inking?

Timely thread. I was just thinking a few days ago about how much I miss having a stylus. The character recognition on my old HP iPaq (windows mobile) was better than the autocorrect on any of the iphone or android devices I've used, and that was 6+ years ago.

I'd argue that the current style UI for touch keyboard entry with autocorrect is doomed... I don't think it's as efficient as a blackberry-style keyboard or a touchscreen/stylus combo.

SWYPE is the future of input. I'd pay to get Swype for my iPad. Swype is very fast and easy!

Yes, I think asia character HWR is used in feature and smart phones in Asia. Even my iPhone has a very effective kanji recognizer.

FWIW, I loaded this cool bit of inking software (ritePen 4.0) a month ago....

(the vid, they exaggerate greatly the gestures used)
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It's very useful on windows pen tablets. ..and better than the TIP if one is using their big fat finger on a cap-touch screen. ;)

Swype is available for jailbroken i devices.

Works fairly well but needs a little more development. The guy writing the code is constantly improving it. I will start a post when I feel it is worthy of keeping on my devices. I try it every few updates.

swype blows...that was the first thing i turned off on my keyboard screen.
yrmv

I never embraced inking, and don't know anyone who has.

Yeah, I had high hopes for that, when the Galaxy Tab came out. But in practice, I lasted about 5min's before deciding 'screw this - I don't need to learn another new input method.'

This "ritePen" thing really has some time saving utility. (for tablets . . a real, full-sized keyboard is still faster)

I find swype slowr than typing. I have a older droid with the slide out keayboard. Best phone device I've ever owned. Never heard of inking, I remember trying to learn that goofy palm thing with the stylus. Yes, this mistyped mess was done on the droid,. Makes me focus on saying less than more. :)

No Glen, there is not much emphasis on cursive any longer.

I always get a kick out of reading something that my mother or grandmother has written. Omi has passed but mom still retains that old world German gothic style of writing.

My father had beautiful handwriting as well and it is sometimes sad to read things he wrote in later years. You can see the shakiness setting in.

Here's my birthday present to myself this year. I have most of their products including the Cintiq monitors.

This is a really neat product from a great company and for $200 it's a steal.

Inkling | Wacom Americas

I think that it's going to come back, it's a price point thing right now.

It worked before, because the tech was resistive touch. Cheap, reasonably durable, precision input. But it also has lots of drawbacks. Calibrations get funky, scratches easily, distorts the screen a little bit, etc.

The Slate has the tech where we need to be, capacitive touch for nav, slick, cleanable, durable screen, glass is even an option, etc. And then it has the digitizer below.

All of the vertical market apps I see that use tablets, for instance doctors and inspectors, they are still using handwriting input a lot of the time. They have the ability and business necessity to spend $3000+ on their devices though.

I think when Win8 gets popular there will be enough Slate-style tablets available that it'll press the cost down, and might even make it down into phones.

I know I'd be super frustrated trying to do any reasonable amount of input on an iPad that's capacitive touch keyboarding only for the most part.

I'm also of the opinion that dictation will never really catch on in a big way, not due to tech, but because it's not quiet, and that having a stylus on a tablet will continue to be way less frowned upon in a meeting than taking notes by tapping at an iPad, or worse, a full laptop.

Another quick thing I thought of, the phone techs that I have come work on our system have a secondary little pull out digitizer to take signatures on their workorders, there is a good use for make digitizers more ubiquitous right there.

(Though why digital signatures still hardly get used frustrates me almost as much as Fax machines that people cling to)

yeah, Cintiq makes some nice product, and that pen tech has been out for years now. - rather color limited though.

interestingly, part of the ipad commercials has someone writing a giant Chinese symbol. -again, input precision makes either a kindergarten finger-paint, or a nice hand-penned piece.