New Rasterman Image...

Ori Pessach opessach at gmail.com
Thu Oct 2 05:35:40 CEST 2008


On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 9:11 PM, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler <
raster at rasterman.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 22:57:10 -0400 Joel Newkirk <freerunner at newkirk.us>
> babbled:
>
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 20:32:34 -0600, "Ori Pessach" <opessach at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I have a question about the "predictive" keyboard shown in one of those
> > > movies - what on earth is the justification for providing the following
> > > predictions - User input is on the left, prediction is on the left:
> > >
> > > w - a
> > > wo - so
> > > wor - wot
> > > worl - work
> > > world - ? (I'm not sure what was the prediction, but at this point it's
> > > moot... It was probably wrong, anyway.)
> > >
> > > The qtopia keyboards do the same braindead thing. They're perfectly
> > > unusable
> > > as a result. The handwriting recognition engine appears to be wired
> into
> > > the
> > > same "prediction" engine, resulting in letters that were recognized
> > > correctly to be randomly replaced with incorrect letters.
> > >
> > > Is this a bug, or is that the intended behavior?
> > >
> > > --Ori Pessach
> >
> > Intended, you just have to understand what it's doing.
> >
> > Unlike T9 and other predictive inputs that are familiar from cellphones,
> > the keyboard predictive process looks at neighboring keys, 'predicting'
> > that periodically you may hit the wrong one.  (if you're using your
> finger
> > that's pretty likely, especially if they're as wide as mine)
> >
> > If you pay close attention, the actual user input is "helko worlc", and
> yes
> > it suggests 'hello' and 'world' as the prime suspects.
> >
> > As a developer and hacker I hate it.  For text messaging it seems it
> would
> > be useful, presuming that the user won't always have (or choose to use) a
> > stylus.
>
> bingo. thus the terminal keyboard layout exists - it doesnt correct/predict
> or
> suggest. you get what you press, no more, no less, and immediately. so i'm
> trying to conquer both worlds. i have actually been using the corrective
> keyboard for testing - the freerunenr has a 2.8" screen. in practice thanks
> to
> the bevels on the sides its effective usable area is about 2.5". and on
> that
> tiny surface area i can usably type in full english sentences with very few
> mistakes WHILE walking down the street. thats much better than i can do
> with a
> stylus and a "non-corrective" keyboard on windows ce/mobile/pocketpc, on
> qtopia's "stylus" keyboard on my roker e6 and on the matchbox qwerty
> keyboard
> etc. etc.
>
> for entering sms/email/"human stuff" its great. if the word is not in your
> dict
> - it will be listed always at the top of the long-suggestions list (tap the
> top-left arrow). it will then be added to your dict. as you use words their
> "Frequency count" goes up and is stored. it learns what words you use a lot
> and
> tends to offer them as predicted corrections much more accurately once you
> have
> been using it for a bit.
>
> it is guessing what you meant to type based on the "you probably pressed
> the
> key you wanted or somewhere near it - maybe a key or 2 away, per letter in
> the
> word, so let me search a dictionary and look to see what you likely may
> have
> meant". as you type its looking these up and suggesting words. it won't
> suggest
> a word other than one in the dictionary file OR one in your personal
> dictionary
> (one it's learnt), or EXACTLY what u pressed. depending on how many things
> match
> you may get more in that list than can be displayed above the keyboard, so
> the
> top-left arrow brings up a full scrollable list of all matches in that
> case.
>
> what the qtopia keyboard does (i can't comment as well as the illume one)
> and
> illume do (which was heavily inspired by qtopia's keyboard - and kudos to
> the
> tolls for it. of course some things i really dont like about it and i've
> tried
> to address them in illume's keyboard - but qtopia's is very good!) is
> expect
> you to be entering "english text" (eg an email, sms, some notes etc.) and
> correct. both have modes to FORCE a letter to be used (in illume press and
> hold
> for 0.25 sec and the zoom box pops up - qtopia has a similar thing). in
> illume
> any letters you zoomed in on will not be "corrected". they will be taken as
> explicit selections and thus reduce the search space. illume provides
> multiple
> layouts as FILES - so you can extend them and provide more of your own for
> yoru
> langauge or personal preferences. the terminal layout just makes the illume
> keyboard be a "dumb stylus keyboard" where 1 press on 1 key == exactly that
> key
> stroke sent to the app. nothing more or less.
>

Making the user compensate for the algorithm's mistakes before it made them
doesn't sound very useful. Sounds like it assumes that the user has intimate
knowledge of the correction algorithm, which you have, and I don't. Maybe
that's why it works for you and drives me absolutely batty.

(I'm talking about the mode where the user is expected to force a letter
before she has a chance to find out that it's going to be corrected in an
unhelpful way.)

--Ori Pessach
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