Re: [NTLK] Inkwell and cursive HWR in OS X

At 9:41 PM +0100 5/7/08, Lord Groundhog wrote:
>~~~ On 2008/05/07 19:59, Martin Joseph at NT@stillnewt.org wrote ~~~
> > I would also like to restate that the developer of the Newton's print
>> recognizer stated that the print recognizer does NOT LEARN at all
>> about how you write. This is constantly mischaracterized here on the
>> list, and it should be understood that while you might learn to make
> > it work better, it's not going to learn how you write.
>
>Does that also apply to cursive recognition? I write cursive script
>exclusively, and my experience has been that my Newton feels as though it --
>how shall I say this? -- "adjusted the way it interprets my scribble to
>achieve higher accuracy", or "adapted its recognition algorithms to my
>input" or whatever. To me that's almost as close to "learning" as I expect
>from a computer program designed to perform HWR.
>
>But is it all smoke and mirrors? And if it doesn't "learn" my handwriting,
>what does it do and how did it adjust its treatment of my writing to
>eliminate mistakes?

The print recognizer does not learn. It does adjust its expectations about character height, so it might get a tiny bit better about case disambiguation if you are consistent over time. But other than that, a learning version was never deployed. (It's based on a neural network, so it certainly could learn, and does learn the user-independent behavior prior to shipping; that technology was just never put into the shipping product.)

If I remember right, the cursive recognizer can learn, but I *think* you have to go through the little training exercise to make it do so. I know that was the case in early versions, but it's possible they made it learn on the fly. I don't think they ever got around to that, but I sure wouldn't swear to it.

In many cases, that extremely powerful learning device you have between your ears is doing most or all of the learning. You adapt your writing style just enough to evoke higher and higher accuracy. Since you're constantly getting feedback, every time you write, you actually learn fairly quickly, without it being too difficult or intrusive. There's also a natural learning curve associated with writing with an unusual pen shape and material on an unusual writing surface. Those things make a real difference. (E.g., we were able to measure a significant improvement in accuracy just by using a textured display versus a slick one, so that friction provided tactile feedback while the user was writing.)

- larryy

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Received on Wed May 7 17:45:30 2008