Sometimes it takes a decade or so for an idea to reach fruition - or at least to have a better re...

[G+_Midwest Concert Video]

Sometimes it takes a decade or so for an idea to reach fruition - or at least to have a better reason for existence.

 

Back in the late 90s, Ken Perlin's group at NYU came up with Quikwriting, an alternate text entry system for the Palm Pilot. It was a way to enter continuous text with a stylus in a space about 1" square.

 

At the time, it was a solution in search of a problem, as the Palm screen was not 1".

 

Now, the most recent version of the Apple Watch has a way of entering text, but it is done writing individual letter strokes.

 

If Quikwriting was ported to the Apple Watch, or Androidwear, someone who had learned the system could enter text very quickly. without ever taking their finger off the screen.

 

[G+_Jason Marsh]

One word: meh

 

I remember using something similar on my Palm m505, and I don't miss it.

 

On that, it was more or less a different stroke to write each character of the alphabet, but no magic scribbles for words. So writing was the same, just using different movements in place of the standard characters.

[G+_Midwest Concert Video]

In use, it was a matter of making continuous looping motions in different portions of the designated area. Again, there wasn't much point to it on a Palm because it wasn't constrained. But with a watch face, you are constrained. You put this on an Apple Watch and you could have a very fast text entry system.

 

Maybe it seems reasonable to me as I learned Palm's Graffiti system and got very quick with it, but learned about this as lifting the stylus from the screen seemed a lot of wasted effort.

[G+_Midwest Concert Video]

Jason Marsh Examine it more closely. The Palm product was Graffiti, and was simplified separate letters. This is completely different. In Quickwriting, you start each letter in the middle square of the 3 by 3 grid - that's "home." Then you move into one of the other eight squares.

 

Every character is written with a series of loops in and out of one or more the eight outer squares.

 

The side squares have three characters on them, the corner ones have five. So the right middle square has the letter U T and Y in it. To write a T, you go from the middle to the right square then back to the middle. To write a U, you go from the center to the middle, up to the upper right, then back to the middle.

 

It's harder to explain than to do. The end result is the person writing is basically scribbling, never lifting her finger from the screen. A space is the stroke from the center to the bottom middle, and back.

 

https://mrl.nyu.edu/projects/quikwriting/qc.gif