~~~ On 2008/07/03 20:23, robinson at gaudo@terra.com.br wrote ~~~
> Larry, I still use my MP2100 for writing.
> It is very good on HWR.
>
>
> Cheers
>
> Robinson
Larry,
Seems like there is no shortage of ideas of what to use your Newton for.
For the record, I use mine for notes, writing essays and reports, client
notes, as well as my appointments and address book. I'm looking to add
apps, little by little.
So since everybody else is talking apps and uses for the Newt, let me
amplify Robinson's post, because it's easy to shine it on. Sorry if you
already are a maestro of HWR.
If you take the time to experiment with your Newton's HWR settings, and to
help it learn a few things it needs to know, it probably will reward you.
Some people can get really good results even without doing this (I was one
of the lucky ones), but these things give the Newt some initial help to fine
tune its responses. There are some folks whose style of writing seem to be
just beyond the Newton's abilities, judging from what some folks here have
reported, but you won't know till you try.
I've no doubt there's a really good beginner's guide to customizing the HWR,
somewhere in the NewtonTalk archives. I've got no idea where it is, so I'll
just include a couple of useful points to get you started until you find it.
Some of these are and the rest are things I've gone through with a couple of
other people just starting to use a Newton that seemed to work for them.
Open up Preferences. Open up Handwriting Recognition. Now, I know it's not
usually mentioned but when I started out with my first Newton I somehow
accidentally ticked the box "Configure for guest user" and then didn't
really notice it for awhile. By the time I realized what I'd done and
turned it off, I ended up having to do my fine-tuning all over again. So,
make sure that box is unticked. (Of course you won't be as foolish as I
was, since you're not a complete noob like I was, but just in case some
complete noob is also reading this ...)
The Handwriting Recognition slip has a number of choices to make. One thing
that's easy to overlook is the bar for "closely spaced" to "widely spaced".
Since the Newton is made for average writing, and I tend to write quite
small, a little experimenting with this led to an improvement in a few
things that weren't optimum. I think I had to go back to this 2 or 3 times
before I got it exactly right.
At the bottom of that slip is a button "Options". This one is *very* useful
to the fine tuning. Click it.
The options are all useful, but some are better than others. Inside
Handwriting Settings you get to choose to turn on Letter-by-letter in fields
and in Notes. But best of all, you get to choose "Learn my handwriting".
Be sure this one is turned on!
The next one that Newton really likes you to do is "Letter Shapes". The
Newton is programmed to recognize several different ways of forming a
letter. If your writing is standard enough you might get good results even
if you don't do this and just use the default settings, but working through
this slip will help a lot if your writing isn't straight out of the form
book. It's well worth the 10-15 minutes.
You tap on the choices they offer, your Newt will show you the direction of
the pen movement for that choice. If that's how you write that letter,
select "Often" (sometimes you have to select the nearest thing to yours
because they don't offer you the precise form or direction). If the letter
form or the pen direction are wrong, select "Never". "Rarely" can be useful
if you have customized letter-formms in certain combinations.
Finally, the "Fine Tuning" selection lets you tell your Newton how to
recognize your writing on a scale from "slowly, more accurately" to "fast,
less accurately". It's a balance of performance well worth tinkering with.
It also lets you tell Newt how long a delay you want before it transforms
your writing into text. This balance of behaviour is also worth tinkering
with. It seems best not to ask Newton to transform your writing before it
has time to recognize it, but since the two scales aren't marked to indicate
how to compare the two time scales to correlate them, it was worth it to
tinker with this setting too.
Once you've done this, if you find that you aren't getting the results you
want, you have one more trick: hunt through your icons till you find
"Writing Practice". Use it.
Somebody else will have to talk about the technicalities of what really
happens, but what it feels like is that you and the Newton "learn" how to
co-operate with one another in turning your handwriting into type.
Depending upon the specifics of your handwriting, either you or Newton will
do the bulk of that work, but the end results should be that you and your
Newton are happy together.
From there, all those things Chris and others have mentioned are just that
little bit easier and more fun. The "easier" part is because you don't need
the keyboard. The "fun" part comes when strangers walk up to you when
you're in the bus queue or walking through a bookshop or sitting in a
lecture, see you writing in your Newton, and say, "Wow! What's that? That
is so-o-o cool!" and start asking you about it.
And for the rest of it, there are so many things you can do with your Newton
that it's probably best to decide what you want to do, and then ask here
what app you need to do it. As it happens, you're in the best place in the
world for Newton owners. You're in NewtonTalk!
Good to have you here. And if that was an explanation you don't need, pass
it on.
Shalom.
Christian
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
łAny sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a Newton.˛
-- what Arthur C. Clarke meant
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZzpdPJ7Zr4
(With thanks to Chod Lang)
http://tinyurl.com/29y2dl
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/3942
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
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Received on Thu Jul 3 18:43:36 2008
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