Anyone else have problems with national characters in Calligrapher ? SO fed up !

[jsnielsen]

Hey all,

a while ago I bought the Danish language pack for Calligrapher. It has never ever worked. I can write å consistently, but no other letters.

Just as Calligrapher never was able to let me edit Danish letter shapes. Ever !

So I filed an issue with them some time ago, getting an answer to "train Calligrapher". I'm not about to use a hell of a lot of time training a program that doesn't even let me do a basic thing like editing letter shapes. I'm not about to enter every damn word containing æ, ø and å just to get Calligrapher to recognize them.

So I filed an issue with them again, some months later:

----- Original Message -----
From: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 8:19 AM
Subject: CalliGrapher 7.5 Question


I previously filed an issue regarding the language packs. I bought the Danish language pack.

1. I can't edit letter shapes for Danish characters 2. Recognition of Danish characters fails 99% of the time. å/Å is the only one I can make Calligrapher recognize

When will this be fixed ? I also tried the 8.0 beta, it doesn't work there either.

I want what I paid for. And don't tell me to "train calligrapher". The fact is, it doesn't work, and I would be surprised if you even tested this (It would be the worst test ever, in that case).

Poduct: CalliGrapher 7.5
Serial:
Device: Windows Powered Pocket PC 2003SE
Model: Dell x50v
System: Windows CE 4.x (.NET)
From: Jacob Saaby Nielsen <[email protected]>
Phone:

And this is what you get back:

I would suggest asking the retailer for a refund, if the product is not satisfactory to you. It is unfortunately not possible to make this work for 100% of the population, sorry.
-
Phatware Support

And I thought Phatware was a professional business. Instead of doing something about it, they just say "sorry it doesn't work for all, get your money back".

Well I've tried this on my x50v, my Qtek 8080 and my iPaq 2210, and it doesn't work on ANY of them.

So my guess is - IT DOESN'T WORK, PERIOD ! Phatware, TEST YOUR PRODUCTS BEFORE RELEASE !

Do any of you guys have problems with the language packs recognizing your national characters ?

Regards,
a disappointed and disgruntled Phatware customer

[coolabah]

Forgive me if you already know this but thought I'd post it just in case. Although I don't have your exact problem, some of these tips worked well for me, particularly in the WAY you draw the letter, some letters I was drawing exact correct shape, but in the wrong way ! Changing this improved heaps:


Tips to increase the recognition quality (from user manual)

You will have the best recognition quality when using the default letter shape settings. Disabling too many shapes will decrease the recognition quality. There is only one reason to disable a certain shape of a certain letter, which is if calligrapher recognizes this letter incorrectly because you wrote its shape similar to another letter. For example, if your "o" is recognized as "u", you can try to disable some shapes for "o" or for "u", or for both. However, if you disable too many shapes you will decrease the recognition quality. When you click on the selected shape in the Letter Shape Selector it will redraw the letter showing the direction in which you should move your pen. The direction of the pen strokes is as important as the shape. Try to write bigger characters. The minimum recommended size of your handwritten characters should be equivalent to size 16 (or bigger) of the Tahoma font. (To get an idea how big it is, run Pocket Word, select the Tahoma size 16 font and write “something”). Upper case characters should be at least twice as big (or bigger) as the lower case characters.

[jsnielsen]

Hey cool :)

Thanks for you answer. I know these things though. However, NONE of the Danish characters are available in the Letter Shape Editor. None.

If I try to write ø/Ø, which is a pretty straightforward character, I get zero (0). Even if I turn off that way to write 0 in the Letter Shape Editor, I get 0.

I've tried every damn way there is to write that character. It just plain does not work.

å, it can recognize somewhat consistently. Å to da degree. æ/Æ, forget about it. And the same with ø/Ø.

And like I said, NONE of them are available in the LSE.

[coolabah]

Hey cool :)

Thanks for you answer. I know these things though. However, NONE of the Danish characters are available in the Letter Shape Editor. None.

If I try to write ø/Ø, which is a pretty straightforward character, I get zero (0). Even if I turn off that way to write 0 in the Letter Shape Editor, I get 0.

I've tried every damn way there is to write that character. It just plain does not work.

å, it can recognize somewhat consistently. Å to da degree. æ/Æ, forget about it. And the same with ø/Ø.

And like I said, NONE of them are available in the LSE.


Hmmm... :( .... that's very disappointing !
Maybe it is time to look at other alternatives ?? When I saw this I thought of you:

I have no experience with this software but is this any good ?? :
http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=741

they also make a Danish pack for converting your PPC to a "Danish environment"

http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=16620


hope you get something worked out !! :)