"Are there any programming languages that were designed for pen and paper?"
Well, I designed http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/dev3/paperalgo, and I like it okay, but I still find it a lot harder to read than more conventional languages.
New Kind of Paper
61–70 of 127 posts
Re: New Kind of Paper
#62SAP Inscribe took this idea further a few years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kICnfrqOizw
I tried to find more information about it, but it looks like it died as a demo. Some interactions were nice, but majority of them would probably be better as a dialogue with Siri-like assistant.
Re: New Kind of Paper
#63In the final example the handwriting is adapted to the application, and differs significantly from the original handwriting used in earlier examples. Then it goes on to say that the app has everything you need, while needing to learn to write in monospace for it to work. Being someone with poor handwriting, this would slow down writing for me. A possible answer for this would be to update the expected places for a ch…
Anyone still remembers [Graffiti]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) )? ;-)
IIRC, Graffiti itself used to be patent-encumbered in the 1990s, but any such patents should be fully expired by now. I wonder what's blocking a FLOSS reimplementation of something similar for the modern mobile platforms. If the glyph shapes are problematic (though they shouldn't be) there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_type which is over 100 years old.
Historically, graffiti-like systems have also been used for "night writing", so they might have some accessibility benefits as well.
Re: New Kind of Paper
#64Nobody writes asterisks like that in handwriting - is that to help the ocr? We just use an × for multiplication, really.
I write asterisk like that. :) But middle dot "·" works as well. Problem with "×" is that it is basically letter "x". This ambiguity applies to more characters, just a simple example – a lot of Americans write "1", "l", "I", "|" as one symbol. This is fine when you have context, e.g. a phone number, but programming language is a mixed bag where context isn't much of a help.
You don't write letter x in handwriting. You always write cursive/italic x that cleanly solves the ambiguity with × sign. Similarly, "l" is handwritten and | is "broken" in the center.
Re: New Kind of Paper
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone still remembers [Graffiti]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) )? ;-)
IIRC, Graffiti itself used to be patent-encumbered in the 1990s, but any such patents should be fully expired by now. I wonder what's blocking a FLOSS reimplementation of something similar for the modern mobile platforms. If the glyph shapes are problematic (though they shouldn't be) there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_type which is over 100 years old. Historically, graffiti-like systems have also been us…
Probably not Open Source but there is an Android keyboard based on Graffiti: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.access_com...
Re: New Kind of Paper
#66In the final example the handwriting is adapted to the application, and differs significantly from the original handwriting used in earlier examples. Then it goes on to say that the app has everything you need, while needing to learn to write in monospace for it to work. Being someone with poor handwriting, this would slow down writing for me. A possible answer for this would be to update the expected places for a ch…
This is also what bothers me. The example before the one you mentioned looked the best to me. And it seemed to reliably detect numbers and operators as well, so I don't see why this approach should not be able to resolve the equation like the last example did. Writing in monospace is not only unnatural, but the approach shown even makes it one step worse: you need to write in the cells. You're completely giving up th…
Yes, the grid paper is a stepping stone for the line paper. However, it is a tradeoff. With grid cells you can tell what symbol is in it. With symbols on a line, you have do guess a lot. Illustrative example: there is a unicode symbol for "colon equal" – "≔" – if you write it in a cell you can be sure you got it right. If you write it on a line you could mean two distinct symbols – ":=".
The problem you mentioned – that you have to plan ahead – is not true for grid cells. There is a part in the GRAIL system demo where it is shown that you can go quite far with this approach. [0]
But as you mentioned, flexibility of handwriting is in its non-modal interactions. I am currently working on a line-based editing, but it's a bit tricky.
Re: New Kind of Paper
#67Am I the only person here with handwritting so bad that the automated recognition just completely and utterly fails? I got the latest iPad Pro with the Pencil 2 some time ago - and as much as my friends rave about the "very good and totally great" handwriting recognition in text fields, it's just totally bust for me. I can't write a single word and have it recognized correctly on first try. It takes me 10x as long to…
Try Nebo app [0], it is so far the best note taking app for iPad. Also, it is the second to last demo in the article, and that is the target I am aiming for.
[0]: https://www.nebo.app
Re: New Kind of Paper
#68I wonder when can we get a Pen and Paper on a computer system with 1ms latency [1]? The Apple pencil said it has 9ms response time, which is already close to the lowest latency it could support on its 120Hz Screen ( 8.3ms per frame ). And I may be in the minority but I much prefer there is an iPad that doesn't have a camera bump so it can lay flat on the table. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4
Lower latency is always better, but in my experience even the 20ms latency of the Remarkable is something you get used to very quickly.
The video your linked is making latency even more obvious by moving the finger fast.
Re: New Kind of Paper
#69Re: New Kind of Paper
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do -- the Mac has had that feature since forever (if you plugged in a tablet like a Wacom). A shame Apple doesn't seem to respect the Mac any more -- it's a great example of a use case that went from the Mac to the iPad. I prefer to take notes with a pen. The built in Notes app seems to think you write in a notebook the way you type into one: that each line contains one topic. But in fact when writing notes I tend…
> Notability and Soulver and most other apps don't recognize the pencil at all. I may have misunderstood your comment, but Notability uses pen-pressure to regulate stroke width, so it must know the pen is there. Conversion from handwritten strokes to text is very far from perfect (unusable for code snippets and math formulas), but it is good enough for writing "human speak", like say forum comments or a CV intro.
Wow, what a typo I made. I meant Notion has no pen support.
In fact the two apps I use for writing are Notes and Notability. GoodNotes is OK¡ but I found Notability a bit better for my use.