From: Scott Roy Atwood (atwood_at_cs.stanford.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 12:51:13 PDT
* John Charlton <johncharlton_at_mac.com> [020924 18:04]:
> Now I have no doubt the Newton OS wins for ease-of-use, and
> its killer app is the handwriting recognition (he claimed
> Graffiti was faster - "fewer strokes", which I disputed, but
> then I had trouble writing a simple phrase with spaces
> appearing in the wrong places - stress).
I'm afraid your friend has a good point about Graffiti. Each lowercase
letter and number in Grafitti can be made with a single stroke, whereas
in standard printed handwriting like the Newton recognizes, many letters
require two or more pen strokes. However, that doesn't necessarily
answer the question about which is faster, because it doesn't take in to
account expert vs. novice users, and error rates and corrections.
For instance, a novice user could pick up a Newton and immediately begin
printed handwriting with little or no training and have relatively high
speed and low error rate. A novice user on Grafitti on the other hand
must spend some time learning the Grafitti alphabet.
As for the effect of errors, that is more difficult to judge, since each
system has very error correction mechanisms.
I am experienced user of both Palm and Newton, and I find that writing
with Grafitti, I *still* have a frustratingly high error rate,
especially with some common letters like "a", "m", and "(". The Newton
on the other hand just keeps getting better and better.
-Scott
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