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.
> 
> 
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-- 
Michael Welter
Telecom Matters Corp.
Denver, Colorado US
+1.303.414.4980
mike at TelecomMatters.net
www.TelecomMatters.net





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