Finger Graffiti
Michael Welter
mike at telecommatters.net
Mon Jul 30 03:16:49 CEST 2007
So, who are they going to sue???
Giles Jones wrote:
>
> On 30 Jul 2007, at 00:49, Nkoli wrote:
>
>> So, there I was pretending my phone has a touchscreen while I wait for
>> GTA02 when this idea popped into my head for a keyboard alternative. I
>> would very much like to hear thoughts. The design would remove the
>> onscreen keyboard completely and replace it with a Graffiti-like
>> interface that can recognize something as wide as a finger or as tiny
>> as a stylus. A couple of icons for a symbols list and other essentials
>> that the user may not want to write out (ex www., .com or greek
>> letters) will be all that's left of the keyboard. For the sake of
>> minimalism, the entire screen, excluding the very top or bottom where
>> the icons are, will be used as the input area. The app should be
>> activated or deactivated with one touch just like the current
>> keyboard. It would have to have some excellent text recognition as
>> well as a built in dictionary to suggest words, which should make up
>> for any holes in the text recognition. Also, a find as you write
>> feature will be handy for finding folders in the main menu, names in
>> the contact list or numbers in the logs, basically reducing scrolling
>> through areas that aren't primarily text based. The benefits of this
>> finger graffiti are that it has a learning curve of zero, eliminates
>> hunting and pecking so anyone can write quickly without needing to get
>> used to the onscreen keyboard. Oh yeah, it's as fast as you can move
>> your fingers and it can easily be done one handed. I have little
>> experience with programming and I hardly do more than write little
>> time saving scripts nowadays, so I honestly have no concept of what
>> such an app would take. What d'you guys think?
>
> I don't think your finger will slide around the screen easily enough to
> make it work. Even if it does it will leave lots of smears on the
> screen. Also I don't see that typing is any slower than graffiti if the
> keyboard is well designed. I just hate using handwriting recognition,
> I've used it on Palm, Windows Mobile and use it now on my Nintendo DS.
>
> If you're like me and don't write on paper all that much you get
> irritated with having to write very perfectly on such devices, I'd also
> say typing uses less effort and you won't get finger/joint ache if you
> use it a lot.
>
> I think the major problem with small screen size and text entry is
> seeing the screen with your finger in the way.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenMoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>
>
--
Michael Welter
Telecom Matters Corp.
Denver, Colorado US
+1.303.414.4980
mike at TelecomMatters.net
www.TelecomMatters.net
More information about the community
mailing list