Re: 8pen input device

Someone tried a similar thing 10+ years ago on the Palm - they thought
it made more sense than writing characters in Palm's script.  As with
this, you had a center spot and you swept the stylus out (in any of
eight directions instead of four) and around and back to indicate a
given letter.  It wasn't the same, but quite similar.  I thought it
was a good idea, so I installed and used it for a while.  But there
were several problems.

Despite their using the word "intuitive" several times in the 8pen
video, it is NOT intuitive: what's "intuitive" to us is the shape of
the letter as we've been taught it, which is why writing in script
works, albeit slowly.  Making a permanent association in your mind
between a letter and a new shape takes a while, especially if you're
not a heavy user of the system.  And if you're a heavy user, you're
essentially crippled for the learning period.  I found I used the Palm
writing input too infrequently to ever fully memorize the system, so
it never became useful and I removed it.  The program never really
made a mark, not even in the relatively small Palm software market.

A couple other quibbles about the system: I see no reference at all to
capital letters.  Implementing them would increase the complexity of
the system, but not having them limits its usefulness.  And second,
while they describe it as "fast," that's only relative to on-screen
keyboard input without predictive text.  I would be really surprised
if anyone got significantly above 15wpm with a system like this,
although again predictive text might help.

Don't get me wrong: I love that people are trying out new methods of
input, because we sure as hell need them for phones.  But in this case
this is similar enough to something that's been tried and didn't work
that I don't see this flying.

On 9 May 2011 04:45, Eduard Werner/Edward Wornar <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Monday 09 May 2011 07:59:09 Keith Ratliff wrote:
> > I think it looks interesting. Ill install it and try it out. Thought I
> > don't text often.
>
> Could you post your experience when you've tried it out, please? My killer
> features would be customization for other languages and unicode support - can
> I input šćł and friends?
> >
> > On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 22:53, Shane Duan <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Simplified gesture, it actually sounds interesting. The only question is
> > > that are those skill easy to learn, and are they easy to forget unless
> > > you use your phone to type like a teenager?
> > >
> > > On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 10:18 PM, Aroleon Grunow <[email protected]
> > > >wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Anyone seen this?
> > > >
> > > > http://www.the8pen.com/
> > > >
> > > > My immediate reaction is "eewwwwww...", and I don't have an Android to
> > > > try it on, but I'd be interested in what other people think.

--
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
[email protected]