

The Analog Keyboard Project: Text Input for Small Devices - mafuyu
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/analogkeyboard/

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tree_of_item
Minuum seems more interesting than this: [http://minuum.com/model-your-users-
algorithms-behind-the-min...](http://minuum.com/model-your-users-algorithms-
behind-the-minuum-keyboard/)

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jsonmez
Missing it completely. Don't use the existing alphabet and characters. Create
a new one that is as simplified as possible. Sure, we'll have a steep learning
curve, but once you learn it...

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vel0city
I agree. Graffiti writing on the Palm series of computers should be seen as
the inspiration on this. It was an alphabet based on the Latin alphabet,
albeit with a few tweaks so that every letter could be achieved with a single
stroke. Honestly it didn't even have that big of a learning curve, especially
since a lot of Palm cases had the Graffiti writing letters on them and the
quick reference was always a tap away.

In my experience, it had a very high degree of accuracy. Once I knew the
alphabet, I could write on Palm devices as fast as I could on pen and paper. I
wonder why there aren't many implementations like Graffiti for stylus-based
text input on a lot of computers these days? They're always striving to figure
out these complex multi-stroke characters, which often tend to be their
downfall on accuracy.

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tiernetworks
Graffiti is in fact already ported to Android:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.access_com...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.access_company.graffiti&hl=en)

This was a wonderful input method -- there is no need to reinvent this
particular wheel.

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jolux
I think trying to input text on a wearable or other small device using a
touchscreen is a fundamentally flawed concept. There are ways to do certain
things well, but this just seems like it would become boringly slow terribly
fast.

With wearables such as watches, we need to think of different ways to input
text and interact with content on the screen and with other people using
similar devices. The future of text input is not swiping at letters on a
screen because it's a cumbersome hack that misses the point of wearables
altogether.

Wearables are for fundamentally different types of communication than phones
are. Obviously I'll get flamed for this but I think Apple is the only company
thus far to have realized that. People are not going to want to be manually
texting others from their watch. It's unnatural and impractical. Watches are
going to be for informal communication, like quickly sending pictures,
emoticons, or heuristically generated predictive text snippets.

This is cool and all but they go into this project with the assumption that
manual text input on small devices is important, which to me at least, it's
pretty clearly not.

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lam
Manual text input per se may not be the most important interaction with
wearables. But getting this to work may be an important first step toward
building, for example, a gesture-based method to interact in general with
wearable devices that are resource-constraint (eg, small screen, limited
voice/camera capabilities, etc).

Seems like you have some thoughts on other methods to input text when you say
"we need to think of different ways to input text".

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WalterBright
This problem was solved a couple hundred years ago. Single button input can be
rapidly and efficiently done using morse code. With two buttons, one can be
dit and the other dah.

One extra nice thing about morse is it isn't necessary to look at what you're
inputting.

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discreteevent
This is not the same problem. The problem here is to come up with an input
method that anyone can use, because anyone can have a watch. With morse only
some people had access to equipment and those people spent time training.
Everyone else just used handwriting to give the morse engineer a message to
translate. Basically a large percentage of the work that computers are used
for is to automate the encoding and decoding of messages - automate the morse
engineers job.

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WalterBright
Note that with computers, people don't have to decode morse. It would only be
for input.

I find it hard to believe that teens, for example, can't very quickly learn to
input morse. After all, they learned that wretched scheme used to input text
on a phone pad.

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scottm30
I wear watches on my left wrist, but I'm also left handed!

Good luck deciphering my right-handed writing. Although as Steve would say,
I'm wearing it wrong.

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melling
I'm still hoping for great voice recognition and gestures.

Ultrasonic gestures?

[http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/06/coming-next-year-
ultrasoni...](http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/06/coming-next-year-ultrasonic-
based-gestures-in-air-for-your-phone/?n_play=543319dee4b0a1616860461c)

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thoaionline
Looks like the old Palm input, back in the 90s.

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cwh
yup. wonder who has those patents now?

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Maxious
Xerox apparently had the patent for the original Palm Graffiti...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)#Lawsuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_\(Palm_OS\)#Lawsuit)

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veidr
I KNEW my 1990s muscle memory for Graffiti for Newton OS would come in handy
again someday!

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twobits
Btw, is there any FOSS software for predictive text input on desktop linux?
(Being on a desktop level, available to all apps.)

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thisjepisje
I'll stick to my Casio's trusty numpad.

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codezero
That form factor seems like the right size to re-implement T9 :)

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_pmf_
Palm's Graffiti?

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murbard2
They use Google in the demo from Microsoft Research, that's a little
embarrassing :)

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lam
It's not that embarrassing if they get it to work well, write several patents
on it, and then get Google, Samsung, et al to pay royalties for licensing
them. On the other hand, MS could build their own wearable devices and use the
technology.

