CalliGrapher 8.0 Beta Announced

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.calligrapher.net/' target='_blank'>http://www.calligrapher.net/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"PhatWare Corporation, a leading provider of software products and professional services for mobile and desktop computers, announces today the beta availability of CalliGrapher 8.0, the next generation of the company's award-winning handwriting recognition software. CalliGrapher 8.0 is available immediately to consumers for Beta testing, and PhatWare welcomes user participation and feedback. CalliGrapher, one of the most popular Pocket PC handwriting recognition applications on the market, analyzes pen strokes written in any application window, then converts those pen strokes into text and sends the recognized text to the target application. Employing advanced fuzzy logic and neural net techniques, CalliGrapher recognizes arbitrary alphanumeric strings as well as words contained in its integrated dictionary."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20050610-CalliGrapher8.jpg" /><br /><br />Remember <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=40382">this thread</a>? The SIP was CalliGrapher 8.0 and now you have the opportunity to be a part of the beta program. Supporting Windows Mobile 2003 and the new Windows Mobile 5.0 platform, CalliGrapher 8.0 includes two input methods: 'Write Anywhere' (the existing CalliGrapher input method) and 'Write Pad' (as depicted in the screenshot above). New input methods aside, CalliGrapher 8.0 also sports PenCommander, as well as a bundle of new features such as improved handwriting recognition, an attachable and floating keyboard, an extended CalliGrapher toolbar, true landscape support, a new colour picker, and much more. Additional information and screenshots can be found <a href="http://www.calligrapher.net/">here</a>. The final release of CalliGrapher 8.0 is expected in Q3 2005.

[ctmagnus]

I swear I've been dreaming about the screenshots in that thread. The new Calligrapher sip looks so nice! :drool:

[Silver5]

BE VERY WARY OF THIS PROGRAM!! It has killed my i-mate Jam.

Immediately after the installation completed a window popped up on the screen telling me to reset the device. I did so and it never came back on. I tried repeated soft resets to no avail. I then tried removing the battery and then putting it back and trying to get it up and running, but with no luck. I have even tried hard reseting the Jam, but have not gotten it working.

If it ends up working again, I'll post again. But for now I don't recommend this program.

[Darius Wey]

BE VERY WARY OF THIS PROGRAM!! It has killed my i-mate Jam.

Keep in mind that this is a beta, and as with all beta releases, caution should be exercised. I've not come across any problems with it so far.

But back to your case, how long did you leave the battery out for? If it was only for a few seconds, I suggest you leave it out for longer - probably in the order of hours. It'd seem a little strange for this software to render your JAM non-functional.

[Ward]

Work well on my x50v. Phatware have themeselves an upgrader.

I just wish there was a way to correct a mistake in the writepad, ie,

"handwriting recognition" shows as "hand writing recoq nition" but how do I delete the unwanted spaces or correct the wrong letters before starting a new block of text?

[Darius Wey]

I just wish there was a way to correct a mistake in the writepad, ie, "handwriting recognition" shows as "hand writing recoq nition" but how do I delete the unwanted spaces or correct the wrong letters before starting a new block of text?

You need to cross the letter/space you want to delete, then hold your stylus on the screen for half a second. It works well. :)

If you get the chance to read through the help files, you'll discover a whole bundle of neat tricks. They talk about the RiteCalc feature, which if you never knew about, you'll fall in love with in an instant!

[Silver5]

BE VERY WARY OF THIS PROGRAM!! It has killed my i-mate Jam.

Immediately after the installation completed a window popped up on the screen telling me to reset the device. I did so and it never came back on. I tried repeated soft resets to no avail. I then tried removing the battery and then putting it back and trying to get it up and running, but with no luck. I have even tried hard reseting the Jam, but have not gotten it working.

If it ends up working again, I'll post again. But for now I don't recommend this program.

I got the Jam back up and working again...I'm really glad I bought Sprite backup and did a backup prior to installation of this beta. In fact, I didn't do anything to get the Jam working. I just walked back into the room a few hours later and it was on. It had hard reset, but at least I was able to restore it from the backup.

I think I'll hold off on this product for now... :roll:

[Ward]

I just wish there was a way to correct a mistake in the writepad, ie, "handwriting recognition" shows as "hand writing recoq nition" but how do I delete the unwanted spaces or correct the wrong letters before starting a new block of text?

You need to cross the letter/space you want to delete, then hold your stylus on the screen for half a second. It works well. :)

If you get the chance to read through the help files, you'll discover a whole bundle of neat tricks. They talk about the RiteCalc feature, which if you never knew about, you'll fall in love with in an instant!

:)

Great, thanks! I had an interview today, so I just nabbed the .cab for a play on the train. I get into the habit of moving the help files away from /Windows/ into my CF card, so help is mostly broken.

[after_forever]

I installed the program, it asked for a soft reset. After the reset, it came up like the first time I turned the unit on. I lost everything. It was like it did a hard reset. I franticly did a complete restore to my Dell X3i, and then performed the install of CalliGrapher 8.0 Beta 1 again. After the soft-reset everything was working great. Very odd.

[JamesM]

Upon installation (to filestore) it hard reset my iPAQ hx4700 as well. I restored from backup and installed to RAM, and it's working fine.

I hope everyone is submitting bug reports to Phatware!

-James

[whydidnt]

This seems like the best SIP compatible with VGA devices that I've found. I think Decuma's input method was much more intuitive than the WordPad provided here, though. I find it often capitalizing the first letter of words. The only way to fix is to delete the letter and rewrite it, as frequently it's not in the list of words to pick. With Decuma, if it mis-identified a letter, you simply wrote the correct letter in that space which was very easy.

Now I'll get off my Decuma bandwagon long enough to ask if anyone has found settings that will make this work well in True VGA mode with OzVGA? The wordpad function at least expands the length of the screen, but it is too narrow vertically be used on a regular basis, and for some reason the toolbar gets cut off when writing in the narrow band. I'm guessing the SIP area is defined by a number of pixels (either in the program or by MS) and that's why it is so narrow. I don't see any options to change that in Oz, but thought maybe someone smarter than me, might have an idea of a work around.

One final thought, I played around a little with the Write Anywhere option, and it was much better at recognizing my chicken scratchings than previous versions, so it looks like they did improve the handwriting recognition here as well. :D

[jmbneaf]

Upon installation (to filestore) it hard reset my iPAQ hx4700 as well. I restored from backup and installed to RAM, and it's working fine.

I hope everyone is submitting bug reports to Phatware!

-JamesThank you for the heads up. I'm doing a back up now prior to install just in case.

-JB

[jmbneaf]

FYI - uninstalled v7.5 first then installed v8.0 beta into FILESTORE on my hx4700. No problems.

FYI - it even works with SE_VGA in landscape mode - 8O

-JB

[bigray327]

I'm unhappy they took out the ability to make the keyboard larger, so we true VGA people are stuck using that super tiny keyboard now. Not cool, Phatware. :|

PPC software companies could learn a lot from SBSH.net. A simple checkbox for "Using VGA Hack software" makes life very nice.

[socrates63]

Calligrapher's SIP looks pretty much identical to Decuma OnSpot. Can anyone comment on a comparison of the two?

[jmbneaf]

I'm unhappy they took out the ability to make the keyboard larger, so we true VGA people are stuck using that super tiny keyboard now. Not cool, Phatware. :|

PPC software companies could learn a lot from SBSH.net. A simple checkbox for "Using VGA Hack software" makes life very nice.
I agree, but for that I use and old SIP from the forums called RIPBOARD. Works great...

[whydidnt]

Calligrapher's SIP looks pretty much identical to Decuma OnSpot. Can anyone comment on a comparison of the two?

I thought I kind of did that in my post above :oops: but maybe not very clear. I still like the Decuma interface better, but this is an improvement on anything else out there. The major benefits for Decuma - the ability to overwrite a letter to change a misrecognition(is that a word?), an easy ability to insert or delete a space between words or letters, Calligrapher doesn't seem to gracefully deal with those times when you need more space to to finish a given word, like Decuma did. I always end up with a space in the middle of the word, unless I backspace. Decuma didn't add a space if you hit the send key in the middle of a word (if I remember right, it's been a while). Decuma recognized Caps and lower case letters better more like how you write on lined paper, I have issues with how Calligrapher handles them.

Pluses on the Calligrapher side, the word correction feature should be nice. I say should be because they need to do some more work there, as the suggestions are often worthless. For example, I wrote wow, it intrepreted this as wou - but in the word picker Wow wasn't available, iou was, you was, woo was, but not wow, I would think the algorithim would recognize that w and u can be similar when scribbled and that wow is fairly common word. They also seem to be more accurate in intrepreting my lousy handwriting.

I say go ahead and play with it. I'm curious to hear what other Decuma fans think of this one.

[Jacob]

The Write Pad SIP is nice.. there are glitches with it, but it IS beta software.

It won't launch the "opt" PenCommander macro, and a couple others don't work.

I was thinking of giving up on Calligrapher, but this is drawing me back.

[socrates63]

Calligrapher's SIP looks pretty much identical to Decuma OnSpot. Can anyone comment on a comparison of the two?

I thought I kind of did that in my post above :oops: but maybe not very clear.

:oops: My bad... I didn't realize there was a second page of comments when I posted my msg... your post answered my concerns. Thanks.

[bbarker]

BE VERY WARY OF THIS PROGRAM!! It has killed my i-mate Jam.

Keep in mind that this is a beta, and as with all beta releases, caution should be exercised. I've not come across any problems with it so far.
Good point. Users are always taking a risk when they help a company by beta testing software. In exchange for that risk and for the trouble, companies normally give beta testers a free copy of the final software. I don't see any indication of this on their beta page. Did I miss it?

[yvilla]

[Good point. Users are always taking a risk when they help a company by beta testing software. In exchange for that risk and for the trouble, companies normally give beta testers a free copy of the final software. I don't see any indication of this on their beta page. Did I miss it?

Last time around, with the Version 7 beta, Phatware offered a discount on the release version (I think 50% maybe) to beta testers. But I don't remember it being mentioned until after the beta period was concluded.

[Darius Wey]

Calligrapher's SIP looks pretty much identical to Decuma OnSpot. Can anyone comment on a comparison of the two?

IIRC, Decuma didn't allow for continuous input. You had to write each letter at a time. CalliGrapher's Write Pad is different in that you can write a word in one continuous stream.

[whydidnt]

IIRC, Decuma didn't allow for continuous input. You had to write each letter at a time. CalliGrapher's Write Pad is different in that you can write a word in one continuous stream.

Actually Decuma allowed you to write in a continuous stream too, that's one of the reasons some of us really loved it. You could enter a few words then just start righting again from the left and it put them in your document. Decuma did require you to print your letters, though, you couldn't write in cursive if that's what you're referring to.

[Darius Wey]

IIRC, Decuma didn't allow for continuous input. You had to write each letter at a time. CalliGrapher's Write Pad is different in that you can write a word in one continuous stream.

Actually Decuma allowed you to write in a continuous stream too, that's one of the reasons some of us really loved it. You could enter a few words then just start righting again from the left and it put them in your document. Decuma did require you to print your letters, though, you couldn't write in cursive if that's what you're referring to.

Yup, I meant cursive (or rather, a continuous stream - i.e. without having to lift your stylus off the screen). ;)

[Darius Wey]

For existing beta testers, Beta 2 has been released. You'll need your Beta ID to download the new version.