Brad Adrian
08-23-2006, 08:50 PM
I've used Calligrapher for years and really like it a lot; I use it for 99% of the text entry I perform on my Pocket PC. I noticed, though, that when I got a device with a VGA screen a little while ago my "mis-taps" increased, that is, often I would tap the screen in a non-precise way and the device would temporarily freeze while it tried to interpret my taps.
I finally figured out that it was the increase in screen resolution that caused the increase in mis-taps. With lower-resolution screens, if I accidentlly moved the stylus a pixel or two while tapping, the device still easily recognized it as a tap and not some kind of minute stroke of handwriting. With VGA devices, a sloppy tap has a greater chance of being confused with a stroke, because it's now several pixels in size.
It's analogous to moving your PC mouse a tiny bit in-between double clicks; you can actually tweak your PC system to be more tolerant by setting doubleclickheight and doubleclickwidth parameters. On my Pocket PC, though, I was stymied on how to prevent mis-taps (short of becoming a neater handwriter).
BUT...
Recently I figured out that reducing the ink/pen width in Calligrapher by just a tiny bit -- reducing it from "6" to "5" on my VGA device -- the high-resolution screen isn't as easily confused and my mis-taps have been virtually eliminated. Reducing the width further helps a little, but writing feels more natural to me with a "medium" width.
Here's the bonus, though!
By reducing the ink/pen width just a bit, the accuracy of the Calligrapher handwriting recognition engine seems to be enhanced incredibly! I've used Calligrapher for so long that I can get it to recognize almost everything I write. However, with this tiny tweak it seems to approach perfection. I now spend precious little time correcting and more time writing. Calligrapher does create an on-device record of its recognition statistics, but I haven't been able to find out if the folks at Phatware can help me analyze it and prove my results; I'll let you know if we get any hard data in support.
So, if you want to try to improve the recognition rate you get with Calligrapher or want to reduce mis-taps, a very small change in your ink/pen size just might produce a very big improvement.
P.S. -- I haven't tested this to any extent using Transcriber. Presumeably, because it uses the same core recognition engine as Calligrapher, you might see similar results with Transcriber.
I finally figured out that it was the increase in screen resolution that caused the increase in mis-taps. With lower-resolution screens, if I accidentlly moved the stylus a pixel or two while tapping, the device still easily recognized it as a tap and not some kind of minute stroke of handwriting. With VGA devices, a sloppy tap has a greater chance of being confused with a stroke, because it's now several pixels in size.
It's analogous to moving your PC mouse a tiny bit in-between double clicks; you can actually tweak your PC system to be more tolerant by setting doubleclickheight and doubleclickwidth parameters. On my Pocket PC, though, I was stymied on how to prevent mis-taps (short of becoming a neater handwriter).
BUT...
Recently I figured out that reducing the ink/pen width in Calligrapher by just a tiny bit -- reducing it from "6" to "5" on my VGA device -- the high-resolution screen isn't as easily confused and my mis-taps have been virtually eliminated. Reducing the width further helps a little, but writing feels more natural to me with a "medium" width.
Here's the bonus, though!
By reducing the ink/pen width just a bit, the accuracy of the Calligrapher handwriting recognition engine seems to be enhanced incredibly! I've used Calligrapher for so long that I can get it to recognize almost everything I write. However, with this tiny tweak it seems to approach perfection. I now spend precious little time correcting and more time writing. Calligrapher does create an on-device record of its recognition statistics, but I haven't been able to find out if the folks at Phatware can help me analyze it and prove my results; I'll let you know if we get any hard data in support.
So, if you want to try to improve the recognition rate you get with Calligrapher or want to reduce mis-taps, a very small change in your ink/pen size just might produce a very big improvement.
P.S. -- I haven't tested this to any extent using Transcriber. Presumeably, because it uses the same core recognition engine as Calligrapher, you might see similar results with Transcriber.