From: bb+graffiti.spam.newton_at_andrew.cmu.edu
Date: Wed Aug 31 2005 - 06:26:08 PDT
[Sorry for the long post that's somewhat off-topic...if there are any
parts you don't understand, please let me know and I'll try to clarify.
Also, while this isn't Newton related, I think that people with serious
Newton experience are likely much better people to talk to about pen and
mobile user interfaces - the Newton is one of, if not the only, genuine
full-fledged pen based systems. Most people have no concept of what an
actual pen-based UI is, and have no imagination, so when I look at
working on a UI that combines a PDA and a real pen, I think that
Newtonites are more likely to be able to understand and critique it than
people who think that the PalmOS is the best pen OS]
I haven't played with the Pentop, but I have played with other Anoto pens
a fair amount - likely too much :) I find the technology very interesting.
I like my Newton a lot, but I also find often that paper is surprisingly
useful. Anoto technology lets you do interesting things that involve
combining paper and electronic stuff.
The Fly Pentop uses the same optical assembly and front end technology as a
number of other device based on Anoto's technology. In fact, at early press
events, I noted that they were using Nokia SU-1B Anoto pens as prototypes.
Anoto seems to have two markets in mind with their current technology: The mass
consumer market, which has really not expressed widespread interest in the
system.
Their second market is corporate data entry. Let's say you're going to do a
survey. Do you want to give everybody laptops? PDAs? Easy to drop things with
short battery life? What about backups? Writing on a piece of paper gives you
an excellent, stable backup. It's expensive to pay people to type in the data
on forms, but they're still much more reliable. Also, some fields have legal
record keeping requirements. Using an Anoto pen will let you keep a standard
paper record in addition to an electronic one.
Personally, I am working on a few scenarios with Anoto technology:
1. Print out my source code on a printer, with the dot pattern. Integrate this
with an editor. Now, when I scribble all over the paper, the editor shows me my
notes, and I can work on them on the computer.
2. Integrate a pocket-size looseleaf binder with my schedule. Print out pages
that have my schedule on them. Make most changes to my schedule in the binder
writing with the electronic pen. The strokes are fed to my computer, and
recognized, where they are also added to my electronic devices which beep at
me. The same is true for adding to-do list tasks and other sorts of notes.
Every now and then, I can re-print pages if I want to convert from the
handwritten strokes to a typed version of that.
(This would be for long term meetings, conferences, etc. rather than daily
events that change often.)
3. Use a PDA with an under-sized screen and a pad of paper at the same time to
make notes. I would have a decent keyboard and small (320x240 pixel,
pocket-sized) PDA and an A5 sized notebook. During a class or lecture, when
something that I wanted to draw came up, I would segment the drawing in the
marging of the page and add an ID of some kind - two letters, say. In the word
processor on the PDA, I would type something like "@diagram XY"
Then, when I send the diagram stuff over Bluetooth to the PDA, it will
merge the handwritten diagrams and the notes. In fact, I could have it set
up so that it would let me update the diagram as I added more strokes on
paper - the word processor would subscribe to the diagram and get updates
whenever I hit "send" on the paper.
I'm trying to see if there's any way I can leverage a larger pad of paper
and a smaller screen to create the enjoyment of my Newton. Oh, and I'm
also getting a Nokia 770 as soon as it ships - it's the _closest_ to the
Newton platform of any PDA that has been available since the Newton, in
terms of hardware: 800x480 color touch screen. Quite high density.
Definitely denser pixels, over 200dpi, a bit smaller screen in inches than
the Newton. Very compact device. Bluetooth. Wifi. No cellular modem.
Supposed to ship any day now. IMHO it would be perfect for a Newton
emulator...ok, now back to pens.
You can get Anoto pens from various companies including Logitech, Nokia,
Ericsson and Maxell. Most of them are extremely similar, with the exception of
how they connect to the outside world. Logitech is USB only, Ericsson is
Bluetooth only, Nokia has both, and Maxell pens are only available in Japan.
Logitech will be launching a Bluetooth pen soon.
Why the special dot pattern on the paper? Because that's the only way that they
can do what they do with it. The pen knows precisely where it is on the paper.
From the moment it touches the paper, it knows where on the page it is - unlike
a mouse that only knows how far you've moved, this pen actually knows its
starting position.
If you're wondering how it works...
The math behind the dot pattern on the paper is really impressive. The dots are
on a 0.3mm pitch grid. The dots are about 0.025mm in diameter. They can be in
one of four positions, up, down, left or right. The dots are displaced by
around 0.035mm from their nominal grid positions for one of the four positions.
The pen senses a section of the dots to figure out where it is on the page.
There is a very, very large "virtual paperspace." With a 6x6 grid of dots, the
pen is able to locate itself in _absolute_ coordinates. That's to say, you can
touch the pen to the paper anywhere and it knows where on the page it is. The
virtual grid is very large - literally larger than Europe and Asia combined.
Each dot contains two bits of information, one X bit and one Y bit. The bits
are independent. I won't go into the details of all the dot stuff, since it's
quite long and complicated. The first level of coding is a repeating sequence:
In each axis, there is a repeating sequence of bits. This sequence is called a
"cyclic single track grey code." It is a 63 bit long sequence. If you look at 6
bits of it, you will be able to determine where in the sequence you are.
When you buy (most) Anoto notebooks, each page is unique. Each model of
notebook is the same. So if I buy an Esselte A5 Anoto notebook, the pen will
know that I touched the pen to position (4mm, 23mm) on page 7. I can go back to
that page any time in the future and it will know.
The pen senses in the IR region. Anything else that is IR absorbing will
interfere with the dots. Thus, if you print other black ink on top of the
dots, the pen will get confused. It has a vibrator similar to a cellphone
silent ring one, and will vibrate when you touch the bad area.
Cyan, Magenta and Yellow are all transparent to the IR CMOS camera in the
pen. Also, Anoto has a special ink called "Anoto Special Black," which is
different in the IR region, and appears to be black but is in fact
invisible in the IR region. If you run a printing press, you can buy this
ink from Anoto's supplier. You can also print "black" using CMY and
achieve the same effect in a printer. Note that a number of printers will
decide to be smart, and will replace CMY with K, since it's going to look
the same, right?
Anoto enabled notebooks let you do various things with the strokes. Some
of them let you send a GIF image of your strokes over bluetooth. You can
send an e-mail over your cellphone's GPRS 'net connection. You can upload
the strokes over USB.
If you want to get vector stroke data out of the pen, you have the
following options:
1. Use a Nokia or Ericsson pen, and a subscription service, and the older
style (but still available) paper that came with the Ericsson pen. You
need a subscription service for around 9 pounds sterling/month, I think.
Your pen establishes a GPRS link to the Internet over Bluetooth using your
cellphone to a server that Anoto runs, then you get e-mailed an SVG format
vector file containing all your strokes.
2. Use a Logitech io2 (newer) pen, and the logitech SDK, which gives you
the strokes in an easy to work with format. USB, Windows only.
3. Use an older or newer Logitech pen, and decode the ".pen" files. They are
XML files, with a chunk in the middle that looks confusing. If you rune it
through MIME and zlib decoder, you get more XML data. Thus, a very short
Python program can extract the .pen file. You must plug the pen in via USB to a
Windows computer and have the Logtech software download the stuff from your
pen.
4. License the Anoto SDK for, last I heard, 6000 Euros, and rent a section of
paper for between 500 and 1000 Euros. You'll get Java code that works with the
system.
5. Write your own software and read the files that some paper will let you send
over bluetooth. There may be some free software soon to assist with this,
though it's not going to be an end-user application but rather a DIY toolkit.
Whew. Ok. That's it.
gopi.
-- 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/
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