Input on Input15 April 2002 It seems like there's as many different ways of getting data into PDAs as there are reasons for getting data out of them. Which ones really work the best, or is it all just a matter of personal preference? Thank goodness I can rely on other tech sites to feed me ideas when my column well has run dry for a week. There were two really interesting discussion threads last week, one on Palm Infocenter, and one on Pocket PC Thoughts, about data input methods for PDAs, and it really got me thinking. I've used Palms and Pocket PCs, an I've probably tried most of the input methods available for each. I can't seem to settle on just one. I toggle back and forth on my "input method de jour" and typically end up using at least three different ones in the course of a single day. Am I just weird, or is this a fact of PDA life? Data input has long been a point of contention, or a point of confusion, for PDA users. The "original" PDA, the Apple Newton, aimed high, maybe too high, right from the beginning and tried to offer full handwriting recognition (HWR). I'm sure we all remember the barrage of jokes about the early Newton's HWR, the sometimes hilarious and sometimes oddly insightful misinterpretations it would make of human scrawl. While the Newton eventually got better, if we'd had to wait until it did before more people picked up PDAs, the PDA market probably never would have taken off. Fortunately, that all changed when Jeff Hawkins created Graffiti, a "gesture keyboard" to use his terminology. Graffiti was built around a simple idea: instead of teaching a computer to recognize human handwriting, teach humans to write in a way computers can understand. Graffiti has been a key point in the success of the Palm platform, allowing users to quickly enter data with a high degree of accuracy. It was a significant leap over data input methods used by other PIMs in 1996. For small amounts of text, Graffiti works wonders. It's faster than printing in "real" handwriting and accurate even if you aren't looking at what you're writing. Graffiti has two problems, though. One, it's slow compared to typing, generally 15-30 words per minute, even for people proficient in the Graffiti alphabet. Two, a lot of "normal" people -- i.e. not computer geeks -- simply don't want to learn a whole new way to write. I gave my mom my Visor nine months ago, and she's hardly used it. Why? Because she can't figure out that "squiggly" writing it uses. I'm only basing this on anecdotal evidence, but this reluctance seems pretty common among "normal" consumers. Palm has come under fire for Graffiti recently. Xerox holds a patent on "unistroke" character recognition, and although Xerox's character set looks a lot different than Palm's, the underlying technology of recognizing letters based on a single penstroke is similar. If Xerox wins their patent infringement suit, Palm may not be able to use Graffiti on their handhelds anymore. Oddly enough, Microsoft's Block Recognizer, a passable Graffiti clone for Pocket PCs, might be the only way to use Graffiti on a handheld should this come to pass, as Microsoft has some sort of arrangement with Xerox already. Of course, there is an alternative for people who don't want to learn Graffiti. Almost all PDAs offer an on-screen keyboard with the familiar QWERTY layout. For a lot of people, this is sufficient, but I've never cared for it. QWERTY's not that efficient for 10-fingered typing, and it's even worse when you're typing with one stylus. The letters are generally too far apart, and the stylus has to move too much. Once you start to build up a little speed, it gets harder to hit the right keys. It gets a little easier on Pocket PCs because you have the option of removing the space, backspace, shift and enter keys and making the remaining keys bigger. Quick directional penstrokes replace the missing keys. It helps, but it's still far from ideal. QWERTY isn't your only option for on-screen keyboards, thankfully. One of the most popular alternatives is Fitaly, a new key layout designed specifically for efficiency with a single pen, so that the letter you tap next is statistically likely to be no more than a key or two away from the one you're tapping now. 30-40 words per minute is pretty common after a little practice with Fitaly, and some people have been clocked at close to 60 wpm. On the Pocket PC, Fitaly installs as just another option in the soft input panel alongside the QWERTY keyboard, Block Recognizer and others. On the Palm, it's also available as an on-screen keyboard, but the more popular option is Fitaly Stamp. This is an adhesive overlay that replaces the Graffiti area with the Fitaly layout. This has the advantage of not taking up any valuable screen real estate. Some people don't want to tap, tap, tap like demented chickens. They like the idea of a pen-based computer, but they don't want to learn a new way to write. For both PalmOS and Pocket PC users, there is a solution. A third party utility called Jot on PalmOS and the built-in Letter Recognizer on the Pocket PC allow users to write in "real" lowercase English one character at a time. No special gestures are necessary, and you can cross your "t"s and dot your "i"s, as well as write punctuation marks like quotation marks and colons just as you would on paper. It's a little slower than Graffiti, but there's almost no learning curve. Not enough, you say? You want real handwriting recognition just like the Newton (well, the later models anyway) used to use? You got it, at least if you have a Pocket PC. All Pocket PCs include an input method called Transcriber, which is based on Phatware's Calligrapher handwriting recognition, using the same engine as the later versions of the Apple Newton's HWR. I don't know if it's because I'm a southpaw, or because my "real" handwriting sucks from using Graffiti for so many years, but my accuracy with Transcriber sucks. Lots of Pocket PC users love it, but I've never been able to get acceptable accuracy out of it. I have to correct every third word or so. Supposedly the full version of Calligrapher is much more accurate, but I've never been impressed enough with Transcriber to spend the money to find out. And while PalmOS 5, based on the same ARM processor architecture as current Pocket PCs, should have the horsepower to run real HWR, don't look for a port of Calligrapher to PalmOS. As long as Microsoft is using it for Transcriber, there will probably never be a PalmOS version of the same technology. Sometimes the best data input doesn't use the stylus at all. I'm pretty quick with Graffiti and Fitaly, but nowhere near as fast as I can touch-type on a full-size keyboard. Fortunately, lots of options are available. The most popular is Think Outside's Stowaway, sold for Palm handhelds under the Palm brand as the Palm Portable Keyboard, and for others by Targus as the Stowaway. This is a wonderful full-sized keyboard that folds up in a W shape to a size not much larger than a PDA itself. Even if I don't think I'm going to be doing much writing, I generally take my Stowaway with me anyway, in the back pocket of my jeans (my Jornada is in one of my front pockets). The downside to the Stowaway is that the connector is specific to your brand of PDA. If you switch from a Palm device to a Sony Clié, you won't be able to use the Palm keyboard anymore. A new company is coming out with a new fold-up keyboard that works via IR with any PalmOS or Pocket PC device, so maybe it will be the last keyboard you have to buy. A new trend in the PDA market is the rise of thumbboards. These tiny keyboards don't require a flat surface upon which to type, and they can be more comfortable than pen-based input for longish emails and other medium-length documents. Popularized by the RIM email pager devices, thumbboards can now be added to almost any Pocket PC or PalmOS device. I still have mixed feelings about thumbboards. Once you get used to them, even stubby-fingered folks such as myself can build up a good head of steam on them and be fairly accurate. While not as fast or comfortable as my Stowaway, they are faster and more comfortable than any pen-based method if you're writing, say, more than 200 words. My problem with them is that most pen-based devices are designed to be pen-based. When I use the thumbboard for my Jornada, I find myself reaching for the stylus anyway far too often for navigation, selection and editing. A thumbboard needs two-handed use to be effective, and I need a third hand to hold the stylus. The last input method really isn't here yet. A friend of mine, the kind of guy who lives on Tom's Hardware and has to shout over the noise of all the cooling fans on his various PCs, refuses to get a PDA until they fully support voice input. He wants a computer than he can tell what to do, dictate text to it, and have it understand him perfectly and obey his every command. I have to admit, it's a compelling scenario. I walk an hour or two every day, and usually spend this time listening to audiobooks. If I could use that time to actually write as well by dictating a column or story to my ever-present Pocket PC, that would be a real time-saver. It's not a reality yet. Even high-end Pocket PCs still lack the memory and processing power required for truly accurate voice recognition. If you have a wireless network connection, Microsoft has demoed a technology that allows the Pocket PC to record sound, transmit it to a desktop machine where it is converted to text, then sends the text back to the Pocket PC. This has never been made into a commercial product, though, and Pocket PCs will probably be powerful enough to do the job locally before wireless networking is widespread enough to make the client/server option viable. So what's the "right" data input method? All of them? Maybe. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses, and maybe the key is to have a few different input methods at your disposal and use the one best adapted to the situation at hand. By the way, this column was written on my Pocket PC using Block Recognizer (Graffiti), Letter Recognizer, the on-screen QWERTY keyboard, Fitaly, Transcriber, my HP Pocket Keyboard (a thumbboard) and my Targus Stowaway. I'm still waiting for accurate voice recognition. Someday... Jeff Kirvin
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