at the temporal coordinates: 11/19/01 12:33 PM, the entity known as Grant
[Irradiated] Hutchinson at grant_at_splorp.com conveyed the following:
>
> In a previous message, Laurent Daudelin typed vigorously:
>
>> Just wondering a bit. What is the use of a stopwatch that goes down to 1/100
>> of a second? I mean, unless your Newt is plugged to some detection device,
>> you'll have to tap the screen with your pen to start/stop the timer. By the
>> time your pen tip touches the screen, there might have been 200 or 300
>> 100ths of a second that passed. I guess my real question is what's the point
>> to get such a precise timer when the mode in which you start and stop it is
>> so imprecise?
>
> Hmmm... I'll have to ask the fellow who was looking for this in the first
> place. Even if there was a slight delay created by the time it takes for
> your stylus to touch the screen and for any UI widget to highlight,
> wouldn't the delay be the same when starting the timing as when ending
> the timing? The two delays caused by these particular user events would
> cancel each other out, and you would end up with a reasonably accurate
> timing. And how would this be any different than the delay involved with
> clicking a mechanical button on a handheld stopwatch?
>
IIRC, human reaction time is on the order of 0.1 second. In essence then,
you should expect the 'granularity' of any human-operated stopwatch to be
something less than this, but not a lot less. Still, that's a handful of
hundredths of a second. HOWEVER, depending on when the Newt is
garbage-collecting, or whatever it does sometimes, the time the Newt takes
to process a pen tap can be quite a bit longer than this canonical 0.1
second. Therefore, since this could happen at either the start or the stop
tap, but maybe not at the other one, one shouldn't expect a Newt stopwatch
to be more accurate than 1-to-few tenths of a second.
- Eric.
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