A changelog by Daniel Mettler

I’ve just installed Windows XP SP2 RC2 on my TabletPC :) Everything went flawlessly, I just had to download 106 MB through the new “Windows Update” web application. So far, I haven’t noticed any drawbacks. And I’m totally amazed how much better the handwriting recognition has become! It’s really a huge step forward (the videos didn’t quite show this as they seem to have used RC1). Both in English and in German the recognition rate has increased

remarkably (I’d say it’s a solid 95% now). Improvements in ergonomics are great too: Fewer hand-movements are required to input text (it can be entered right below a text-field for example), you can write multiple lines at once (automatically expanded), easily correct errors and easily switch between different languages. I haven’t noticed any issues with too short or too long delays either. There’s still space for improvements however (require fewer clicks, write right inside text-fields through some kind of zooming, display recognized words aligned below the according handwritten words instead of left-aligned, further improve the recognition rate etc.)

Recognition of Chinese characters is much better too. See this screenshot for example:

我孚习汉语 (“I study Chinese” ;)

Entering URLs is no longer a problem and I could even enter a password using handwriting.

I haven’t checked out the other new features and improvements of XP SP2 RC2 yet, but the afore mentioned improvements alone suggest a strong upgrade recommendation for any TabletPC user (note that this is still a beta version though – I’m not liable for any damages/losses whatsoever ;)!

(BTW This whole article has been handwritten – proof enough? ;)

(Addendum: IE finally displays the CSS layout of this blog correctly – an improvement I have been waiting for for a long time :)

finally, with the kind help of the guys at microsoft.public.windows.tabletpc, i made chinese handwriting recognition work on my tabletpc :) it wasn’t difficult at all, i just needed to install a chinese keyboard service in addition to chinese tabletpc services. it’s not an intuitive solution though (as i don’t have a chinese keyboard and i didn’t want anything but chinese handwriting recognition). ms should have mentioned this in the documentation or better, redesigned the user interface to be more intuitive and hence more user-friendly.

how well does it perform? the recognition rate isn’t particularly good – given the fact that my “chinese handwriting” rather resembles “print characters written by hand” than “true” chinese handwriting (i.e. chinese written by a chinese). quite obviously, recognizing “true” chinese handwriting is more difficult than recognizing chinese print characters (even for humans). nevertheless it’s at least better than if i had to type pinyin (ymmv, particularly if you’re chinese).

now i’d wish there were an automatic transcription of simplified (and/or traditional) chinese to pinyin (which was easy to do with “windows for pen computing” according to fritz switzer)

I start to like my TabletPC :)

I just found two great applications for drawing sketches using a TabletPC:

Ambient ArtRage 1.0. Freeware. Nice effects, intuitive GUI. Sometimes somewhat slow in response (there’s a noticeable lag).
Alias Sketchbook Pro 1.0.3. A commercial tool (free trial) with a very intuitive GUI and a very realistic look and feel (nice work, guys! Kudos!). Excellent, like real, but with the advantages of digital imaging :) That’s how I imagined to use my TabletPC! As a bonus feature, Alias offers useful background templates for free download (among them some cool story board templates :). Have a look at the insightful Penny Arcade SketchBookPro tutorial! For artists (painters, designers, ..) the TabletPC concept is really a “must-have-a-look-at”!

Further, I’ve installed the enhanced Wacom TabletPC driver which enables pen pressure level support for legacy applications.

In other news, I’ve posted a couple of messages to microsoft.public.windows.tabletpc.developer
I hope this will help me make Chinese handwriting recognition work.

[new category: TabletPC]

ok. i installed/enabled the eastern asian language pack on my tabletpc. for some (unknown) reason however, i couldn’t enable chinese handwriting recognition. i was only given a choice of “de” (german), “de_ch” (german for swiss) and “en” (u.s. english). bummer.

so i asked ben who first pointed me to a tabletpc mvp’s blog (which appeared having been abandoned as it only featured a single, out-dated entry), then to microsoft.public.windows.tabletpc. the thing i actually was looking for was some kind of synchronous real-time peer support the way it is common in oss communities (almost every oss project provides irc channels for its devs and users). as it turned out, there doesn’t seem to exist any such thing (a central real-time meeting point for devs and users, like irc.freenode.net) in the ms-sphere.

now here comes my free consulting for microsoft: get synchronous community communication up and running. i know there are efforts in this direction (e.g. www.codezone.ch or www.codezone.de) – but this is not enough. don’t implement community building from top-down. it’s too much services-like, with all the disadvantages i bet you can imagine. instead just provide infrastructure (think of irc.microsoft.com) for user groups to build a sustainable community from “bottom-up” themselves. and heck, if it’s a matter of money, divert some hundred million marketing dollars to initial grass-roots, bottom-up community building efforts. users will thank you (and stockholders as well).