Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

jackschaedler.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 40 posts

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#31

Post by krick »

defgeneric wrote: post #9
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…

> 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…

Yeah, when I was learning Japanese it was a useful thought of how order of strokes actually matters and there should be always 1 way to write a letter, but, no -- everything I can recognize computer should recognize as well. No matter how fucked up, if I can guess it -- the program should guess it. That's being good in handwriting recognition. Everything else will be perceived as subpar by the enduser.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#32

Post by [deleted] »

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)

[deleted]

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#33

Post by unwind »

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 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 about 10 words per paragraph!

Wait, what? Doesn't that imply that a paragraph needs to have 100 words in it, in order for 10 of them to be recognized wrong at 90% success rate? That seems super-long, anyway.

My stats are really rusty, perhaps that's just one of those unintuitive cases that confuse people like me.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#34

Post by coldtea »

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…

>The human convention of written language it to interpret the symbols after they have been completed, not during the act of writing them.

Not exactly. E.g. Japanese handwriting and the order of strokes etc (also in traditional caligraphy/penmanship)

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#35

Post by taeric »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #30
taeric wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen a few that were direct statements of more typos because of the device used. Probably did start and largely remain advertising, though.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#36

Post by taeric »

lozenge wrote: post #24
snowwrestler wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oddly,I know more folks that were non cursive. Even more interestingly, I would think most cursive is more strict in stroke order.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#37

Post by snowwrestler »

unwind wrote: post #33
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 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 about 10 words per paragraph! Wait, what? Doesn't that imply that a paragraph needs to have 100 words in it, in order for 10 of them to be recognized wrong at 90% success rate? That seems super-long, anyway. My stats are really rusty, perhaps that's just one…

It's a (somewhat dated, probably) copyediting rule of thumb that a written paragraph has about 100-200 words in it. This would be in a writing style you might see in a novel or an essay. For online writing, perhaps more like 50-100. Even that might be long for the style of writing where each sentence is its own paragraph, supposedly for impact or whatever. Not sure you can really call it "paragraphs" when each one is only a sentence.

For reference, the above paragraph is 78 words long.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#38

Post by snowwrestler »

coldtea wrote: post #34
snowwrestler wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The human convention of written language it to interpret the symbols after they have been completed, not during the act of writing them. Not exactly. E.g. Japanese handwriting and the order of strokes etc (also in traditional caligraphy/penmanship)

I understand the idea of looking at completed characters and inferring the original order of strokes.

But are you saying that Japanese writing is only readable if you observe the writer during the act of writing? Because that's what some stroke recognition engines do.

Here's a tangible example. Imagine I write "h l o", pause, then go back and place an "e" in the first space, and an "l" in the second space, then hold it up to you. You're going to see "hello," right?

But an algorithm that tries to interpret the act of writing itself, might see "hlo el", because that's the order in which I wrote the characters.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#39

Post by coldtea »

snowwrestler wrote: post #38
coldtea wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The human convention of written language it to interpret the symbols after they have been completed, not during the act of writing them. Not exactly. E.g. Japanese handwriting and the order of strokes etc (also in traditional caligraphy/penmanship)

I understand the idea of looking at completed characters and inferring the original order of strokes. But are you saying that Japanese writing is only readable if you observe the writer during the act of writing? Because that's what some stroke recognition engines do. Here's a tangible example. Imagine I write "h l o", pause, then go back and place an "e" in the first space, and an "l" in the second space, then hold…

>But are you saying that Japanese writing is only readable if you observe the writer during the act of writing? Because that's what some stroke recognition engines do.

Not exactly, but the situation, as I understand it, is somewhat related: Japanese writing is better (and thus more readable) if the writer observes (respects) a specific stroke ordering.

So, one doesn't have to observe a writer while he is writing to be able to better read what they wrote. But the ordering of strokes can have impact on readability, even when one sees the written words after they've been completed.

Re: Back to the Future of Handwriting Recognition

#40

Post by [deleted] »

scotu wrote: post #5
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…

for many of the examples you gave, I think that could be solved through an autocomplete style correction that sure, it's not perfect, but it seems good enough for smartphone users: xample is not a word, so it's probably a typo, so it's probably example... you could also keep multiple interpretation of a word pending (and a text search for all of them would take you there) and eventually ask the user to disambiguate i…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN