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Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

jackschaedler.github.io

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Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#21

Post by miskin »

snowwrestler wrote: post #20
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting discussion, thank you. I am reminded of the Graffiti handwriting notation used by Palm OS. That was single stroke, and devices came with a card depicting all the characters. I was never able to become fluent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)

Your comment illustrates why Palm Pilots found market success with handwriting recognition (as far as I know, the only product that ever did so). The trick was that they treated "Graffiti" as a new alphabet that users had to learn. Thus, when the recognition engine failed, many users blamed themselves (i.e. their Graffiti fluency) rather than the product. In contrast, when products that promised to recognize natural…

I still think that Graffiti was very fast and efficient. It had real effect on my handwriting and I still see myself simplifying letters in graffiti way when I try to write fast :)

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#22

Post by 1787 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #18
1787 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"human convention of written language" is a bit much. Stroke order is almost as important as what the actual strokes are in the definition of a Chinese character, for example. Of course unless you literally watch someone write you observe the characters after they're written, but the most predictive latent mental representation of a character does include an order component. I know this because I made the mistake of…

I don't know what to say other than that the entire purpose of written language is to carry information between people who aren't in a position to directly observe each other writing. (If they were, they could just talk and would not need to write.)

There exist counterexamples in the broader world. Historically in the Sinosphere it was commonish that two people might share a command of written Classical Chinese but not really be able to speak to each other. For a modern example, consider the paper below: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED515291

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#23

Post by tincholio »

snowwrestler wrote: post #10
defgeneric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This demo is constrained to only using one stroke per letter, but systems that permit multiple strokes still get into trouble when the strokes don't match what they are expecting--for example if you draw an X using 4 individual strokes outward from a central point. Arguably, an X drawn this way should NOT be recognized as an X--that's not how an X is spelled. If the task is communicating with the computer, then rec…

The human convention of written language it to interpret the symbols after they have been completed, not during the act of writing them. A computer that interprets the behavior of writing, rather than the final symbols, is going to violate user expectations at some point. Why? Because people do not always write as linearly as you might expect, especially when writing fast. They might drop or mis-write letters or word…

In calligraphy there is the notion of 'ductus', or how and in which order the strokes are written. It has a significant effect on the end result, and for each script, there is arguably only one "correct" ductus. A similar concept can be applied to normal handwriting.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#24

Post by lozenge »

snowwrestler wrote: post #10
defgeneric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This demo is constrained to only using one stroke per letter, but systems that permit multiple strokes still get into trouble when the strokes don't match what they are expecting--for example if you draw an X using 4 individual strokes outward from a central point. Arguably, an X drawn this way should NOT be recognized as an X--that's not how an X is spelled. If the task is communicating with the computer, then rec…

The human convention of written language it to interpret the symbols after they have been completed, not during the act of writing them. A computer that interprets the behavior of writing, rather than the final symbols, is going to violate user expectations at some point. Why? Because people do not always write as linearly as you might expect, especially when writing fast. They might drop or mis-write letters or word…

I highly doubt people are using non standard stroke orders, unless they are very young or it isn't their first language. However, this scheme probably won't work for cursive, which is how people actually write.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#27

Post by kalleboo »

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #19
taneq wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen people write letters in all manner of unexpected ways. If the resultant marks on the paper look enough like the intended letter, then it's readable by a human, and if it's readable by a human, it should be readable by a machine. Not that I don't think "meet me halfway" type approaches (like the Graffiti system) aren't worth using, but in this case we're talking about recognizing writing (the artifact), not…

Interesting discussion, thank you. I am reminded of the Graffiti handwriting notation used by Palm OS. That was single stroke, and devices came with a card depicting all the characters. I was never able to become fluent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)

My mom and I were so fluent in Graffiti when I was in High School that the post-it notes my mom left for me when she was out would be written in it

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#28

Post by pipio21 »

>I think it’s worth asking why anyone in their right mind should care about mid-century handwriting recognition algorithms in 2016.

Lots of people care, specially in Asia(Chinese and Japanese). It is just that the problem is incredible hard.

We put 5 very smart people working for a year on that, and it was totally impossible meeting people's expectations, specially people like doctors taking notes fast(and ugly).

We thought that the market was in creating mindmaps or something instead as people could write slower and better.

But people write a double u and expect the computer to see an "m". With deep learning is possible but extremely flimsy.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#29

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

snowwrestler wrote: post #20
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting discussion, thank you. I am reminded of the Graffiti handwriting notation used by Palm OS. That was single stroke, and devices came with a card depicting all the characters. I was never able to become fluent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)

Your comment illustrates why Palm Pilots found market success with handwriting recognition (as far as I know, the only product that ever did so). The trick was that they treated "Graffiti" as a new alphabet that users had to learn. Thus, when the recognition engine failed, many users blamed themselves (i.e. their Graffiti fluency) rather than the product. In contrast, when products that promised to recognize natural…

Wow, what a nostalgia trip! The Graffiti handwriting system was brilliant. I only owned a PalmOS device for a short time (I was very late to the party and they were already old hat) but I picked it up very quickly and still remember how to write most of the "letters".

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#30

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

taeric wrote: post #7
snowwrestler wrote: post #4

This a cool exploration of technology, and I don't want to take away from that. > The program was efficient enough to run in real-time on a IBM System/360 computer, and robust enough to properly identify 90 percent of the symbols drawn by first-time users. I just want to point out that 90% accuracy is, from a user's point of view, awful handwriting recognition performance. It means you will be correcting on average a…

I don't really disagree, but I think you overstate it, to an extent. For most people, simple 99% accuracy of their input on their phone's system of capture is probably overstating it. There is a reason people have the clever footers "written on phone." That is to say, people have a higher tolerance for things that are within expected norms of their environment. Ideally, we want no corrections. But, having to do them…

I always saw the "Sent from my iPhone" footer as nothing more than advertising, and the ensuing "Sent from my x" as a small act of rebellion or tongue-in-cheek reference.

I hadn't considered that it was intended to act as a warning that the content might be more error-prone.

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