[78] in bcs-newton
Re: Newton Transcription Rate
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Albert Willis)
Thu Mar 25 23:29:26 1993
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 22:53:56 EST
From: awillis@MIT.EDU (Albert Willis)
To: bcs-newton@world.std.com
> From: Randy Parker <rparker@world.std.com>
> Subject: Re: Newton Transcription Rate
>
>
> On Wed, 24 Mar 1993, Albert Willis wrote:
>
> > I was in a group that saw a Newton demo. People in the group mentioned
> > the speed issue. We were told that the speed of recognizing handwriting
> > had to be slowed down, because it bothered people in usability tests.
>
> Though all reports I have from people who've used a prototype indicate
> reasonable recognition, my sense is that someone is pulling your leg on
> this one, Albert.
I don't think so. I can't get into the details of the demo, etc. but I can
assure you that the folks involved were quite serious.
> Existing cursive recognizers running on 486's (including Paragraph's) are
> still far from speedy. I think those in the HWX business would be
> surprised to hear of a cursive recognizer that was so fast it bothered users.
Let me clarify: I'm talking about the print recognizer, not cursive. Sorry that
I didn't make that clear before. However, lets not forget: the Newton will have
a speedy RISC chip and a break-through algorithm for doing this stuff.
Also, Apple didn't think that cursive recognition would be available for the
first Newton when I saw this demo. However, it's my understanding that cursive
recognition was demoed at CES, so progress has been made.
-- Al
> -- Randy Parker, NoteSystems
> BCS Pen Computing Group co-director
> CompuServe PENFORUM sysop
