From: Jon Glass (jonglass_at_usa.net)
Date: Sat Sep 11 2004 - 22:27:28 PDT
On Sep 12, 2004, at 4:10 AM, Jim Witte wrote:
> The HWR of course is integral to the
> Newton "concept", but it is also available (in varying degrees of
> completeness) on desktop OS's, so it's not *unique* to the Newton.
It's definitely the completeness of the HWR in the Newton that makes
the difference. It is designed to not only allow pen input, but
pen-based editing, without requiring a keyboard or other work-arounds.
The scrub and poof, the insertion or removal of spaces with the caret,
the ability to hilight and drag to the edge of the screen for copying,
and so much more. My neighbor has some strange sort of PocketPC cell
phone (MDA) which uses Paragraph's word recognizer (the one used in the
original Newton) and while it recognizes in a similar way, the editing
functions are just so much weaker! So, besides having all of the
weaknesses of the original Newton, it has none of its strengths! At
least his copy of PocketPC has an "undo" button! :-) However, it's the
total, what I call, "freeform" approach to the pen interface that makes
the Newton unique. It is also, IMO, the very thing that wouldn't
translate well to the desktop environment, where you would be forced to
make allowances for mouse input. A mouse always has a pointer on the
screen, whereas the Newton relies on a stylus held in the hand, in a
third dimension that does not always interact with the screen, except
at the point of contact. Very different concepts. I don't see the two
coming together, personally. However, some other features of the Newton
would be interesting on the desktop. :-)
-- -Jon Glass Krakow, Poland <jonglass_at_usa.net> -- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/ WikiWikiNewt for all kinds of articles: http://tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Sep 12 2004 - 15:30:01 PDT