[NTLK] Cursive Writing Recognition and Microsoft

[Contact]

I know Microsoft ultimately bought ParaGraph’s Calligrapher. But Apple, under the Advanced Technology Group, created their own print recognition engine called Mondello. It was first known as Rosetta, but they had to stop using that name. Mondello shipped with the Newton MessagePad 120 onward. It was much improved and has become, today, a marvel of engineering.

It was this recognition engine that really worked. It seems to me that the cursive recognition in Apple’s Inkwell is absent from OS X. On Windows, it has “Newton-like” cursive recognition. What I’m trying to determine is if Microsoft is using Apple’s cursive recognition technology from Mondello. All the information I have is that the ATG was dismantled when Jobs came back and they were still working on cursive recognition (improvements?). Perhaps a deal was done between Microsoft and Apple that’s not public where Microsoft incorporated Mondello’s cursive recognition technology and perhaps even did some of their own work on it as well.

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> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 00:24:11 -0800
> From: Contact <queryus at me.com>
> To: newtontalk at newtontalk.net
> Subject: [NTLK] Cursive Writing Recognition and Microsoft
> Message-ID: <39DB1545-DCEB-4304-8F55-E280397BE799 at me.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> Hello:
> 
> I?ve been looking into what happened and to see if anyone can confirm. I know Jobs killed the Newton when he got back to Apple, and made a deal with Microsoft to ship Internet Explorer with Macs. He also took an investment from Microsoft. 
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> When Inkwell showed up in OS X Jaquar on the Mac some years later, it gave the Mac the functionality to recognize printed text and convert it into typed text. However, what was absent is Cursive recognition. Did Microsoft get the exclusive rights to the cursive recognition engine or simply buy it? 
> 
> Interestingly, the print recognition in OS X Inkwell is a port from Newton: the settings in System Preferences are effectively the same as they are on the Newton OS. But again, Cursive recognition is absent. 
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> I seem to recall discussions about Cursive recognition existing within Windows and that perhaps even the cursive recognition on the MS Surface is, in fact, from the Newton. 
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> If this is the case, it would seem to fit since Gates was bullish on stylus-driven tablets and made a real run of it in the early 2000s. Not to mention Windows mobile back then and how the stylus featured prominently on it as an input method. In other words, I could see Gates seeing value in the cursive writing technology back then.
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> Regards,
> 
> Ryan
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> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2016 22:29:44 +1100
> From: David Arnold <davida at pobox.com>
> To: newtontalk at newtontalk.net
> Cc: David Arnold <davida at pobox.com>
> Subject: Re: [NTLK] Cursive Writing Recognition and Microsoft
> Message-ID: <9E49A770-4EB0-405E-9E9A-7CE5A77EB143 at pobox.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
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> The cursive recogniser was not Apple-owned technology: it was licensed from ParaGraph, and was called CalliGrapher.  I?ve never heard that Apple licensed their print recogniser, but Larry Yaeger used to be on this list, and he?s likely to know for sure (although he might not be at liberty to say).
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> See http://shinyverse.org/larryy/ANHR.html for some of his notes.
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> So, while there?s possibly common history with the Surface, I think the root of that would be ParaGraph, not Apple.
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> 
> 
> d
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>> On 23 Jan 2016, at 19:24, Contact <queryus at me.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello:
>> 
>> I?ve been looking into what happened and to see if anyone can confirm. I know Jobs killed the Newton when he got back to Apple, and made a deal with Microsoft to ship Internet Explorer with Macs. He also took an investment from Microsoft. 
>> 
>> When Inkwell showed up in OS X Jaquar on the Mac some years later, it gave the Mac the functionality to recognize printed text and convert it into typed text. However, what was absent is Cursive recognition. Did Microsoft get the exclusive rights to the cursive recognition engine or simply buy it? 
>> 
>> Interestingly, the print recognition in OS X Inkwell is a port from Newton: the settings in System Preferences are effectively the same as they are on the Newton OS. But again, Cursive recognition is absent. 
>> 
>> I seem to recall discussions about Cursive recognition existing within Windows and that perhaps even the cursive recognition on the MS Surface is, in fact, from the Newton. 
>> 
>> If this is the case, it would seem to fit since Gates was bullish on stylus-driven tablets and made a real run of it in the early 2000s. Not to mention Windows mobile back then and how the stylus featured prominently on it as an input method. In other words, I could see Gates seeing value in the cursive writing technology back then.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Ryan
>> 
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> End of NewtonTalk Digest, Vol 25, Issue 26
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