.KEYWORD tealscript
.FLYINGHEAD IN-DEPTH PRODUCT ANALYSIS
.TITLE Improving your handwriting recognition with TealScript
.FEATURE
.SPOTLIGHT FIGALT tealscript-cover.gif
.SUMMARY Graffiti. Either you love it or you don’t. For those of you who need to enter information into your Palm device but aren’t absolutely thrilled with your relationship with Graffiti, there are finally alternatives. One such alternative, reviewed in depth by Scott Johnson, is TealScript from TealPoint Software. This is a very important new product and everyone who uses a Palm organizer should read this comprehensive, detailed review.
.AUTHOR Scott Johnson
When I first got my Palm organizer, I was very impressed by its functionality and ease of use. However, like most Palm device users, I’ve often found myself wishing that there were some way to improve my Palm organizer’s handwriting recognition. Although Graffiti is fairly easy to learn, there are still a few characters that I just can’t get right, even after a fair amount of practice. Also, some of the alternate character strokes (such as the writing the v backwards) are awkward for me to use. Fortunately, there is now an alternative to the Palm organizer’s built-in handwriting recognition, TealScript, by TealPoint Software (at http://www.tealpoint.com/).
TealScript is a program that replaces the Palm organizer’s built-in handwriting recognition. It’s highly customizable, allowing you to add arbitrary patterns for each character and train it to recognize your particular handwriting’s peculiarities. After using TealScript for a couple of weeks, I can definitely say that my handwriting recognition has improved. Characters that used to give me trouble (notably j, v, and 8) I can now write with no trouble at all, after spending a little time training it to recognize the way I like to write them. TealScript also comes with alternate patterns for a number of characters, allowing you to write letters such as a, e, and g as you normally would while printing on paper. This feature alone will probably endear TealScript to the hearts of many Palm organizer users.
In the remainder of this article, I will explore some of the features of TealScript and provide an introduction on how to get started using it. Some additional comments on my experiences using the software can be found at the end of the article.
.H1 Getting started
You can download TealScript from the TealPoint home page at http://www.tealpoint.com, or from PilotGear at http://www.pilotgear.com. It is shareware, and you are allowed to try it out for free before registering. You can register on the TealPoint home page, or with PilotGear, though if you want to use a credit card you will need to use PilotGear.
After downloading TealScript and installing the default profile (contained in the file Profile.pdb, which is included in the zip file with the main program), you will see the main menu shown in Figure A.
.FIG A This is TealScript’s main menu screen.
The main menu is where you configure certain options for TealScript. The most important two are probably the Enable Globally check box, and the On Up Stroke option. If Enable Globally is checked, TealScript will replace the Palm organizer’s default handwriting recognition for all applications (otherwise, it will be active only when you are within TealScript itself). The On Up Stroke option allows you to specify what happens when you do a full pen stroke from the bottom to the top of the screen. This replaces the up stroke function which is normally configured in the Prefs application under Buttons->Pen.
There are three main parts to the TealScript program, which are accessible through the buttons on the bottom of the main menu: train a profile, test a profile, and edit a profile. You can also view statistics on your handwriting recognition by selecting the Statistics button. Although TealScript allows you to have more than one handwriting recognition profile loaded at a time, I recommend only using the default one as they tend to take up a lot of memory (though feel free to rename it to something more personal).
Let’s look at each part of the program in more detail.
.H1 Training a profile
The first thing you should do when you get TealScript is train it to recognize your handwriting. To do this, simply select the Train Profile button from the main menu, and pick the character set you want to train. I recommend you start with Alphabet, though you will probably want to at least train the Numbers as well.
Training your profile is very easy. TealScript will present you with a sentence (the ever popular "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" which uses every letter of the alphabet). As you write each letter, it updates the pattern matches based on how you draw them, as shown in Figure B. For each letter, it provides you with a suggested pattern (in the Next box), although you are free to use any of the patterns for that letter that are in your profile. After you have written the first letter, it also shows you the pattern you actually drew (in the Last box), and the resulting match pattern which is then stored in your profile (in the Result box).
.FIG B Use this screen to train TealScript to better recognize your personal handwriting.
When you have finished training, TealScript should return you to the main menu. After training, I recommend that you test your profile by selecting the Test Profile button.
.H1 Testing your profile
The Test Profile dialog, as shown in Figure C, allows you to test TealScript’s recognition of certain characters, and update your profile with additional patterns that it may not recognize even after training. To test your profile, simply start writing characters in the given text area. After you write each letter, the pattern you drew will be displayed in the Current box, and the stored pattern that TealScript matched it to will be displayed in the Match box, along with the match percentage (100% is a perfect match). If it doesn’t find a match for what you drew, it will leave the match box blank.
.FIG C Use this dialog to test your profile and update problem characters.
After you have tested your profile a bit, you may find that for particular characters TealScript either finds no match, or matches what you write to a completely different character. When this happens, you can select the Add Last button to add the most recent pattern you drew to your profile.
When you do this, a dialog box will pop up asking you to specify which character your pattern is supposed to match, and in which modes you want that pattern to be active, as shown in Figure D.
.FIG D You can add additional match patterns to your TealScript profile using this dialog box.
There are three groups you can place the pattern in: standard, which is usually used for the normal graffiti patterns; alternate, which contains alternative and optional patterns for the various characters; and distort, which can be used to store degenerate patterns that you find you draw frequently.
The reason to place the pattern in a particular group is that the alternate and distort groups can be configured separately or disabled, allowing you to easily modify which types of patterns your Palm organizer will recognize without having to disable each character’s alternate patterns individually.
When adding a pattern, make sure to specify whether it is drawn in the Alpha (letters) or Number writing areas, and whether it should be used in normal, punctuation, or extended shift modes. It doesn’t do much good to add alternative forms of the number 8 if TealScript doesn’t try to recognize it on the numbers side of the writing area!
.H1 Editing your profile
The final dialog box we will examine is the Edit Profile box, accessible by clicking the Edit Profile button from the main menu, as shown in Figure E.
.FIG E TealScript also allows you to bypass training and testing and edit your profile directly.
TealScript is very configurable, allowing you to exercise fine-grained control over the recognition for each character. Occasionally, you may find that even after training and testing, TealScript still doesn’t recognize certain characters the way you would like.
Using the Edit Profile menu, you can directly edit each character, add new patterns, and change the way each pattern is recognized. For example, after selecting a pattern on the left side of the screen, you can specify a cutoff and a squelch value, which make it less likely that TealScript will match what you draw to that pattern. The cutoff value is the minimum match percentage required before TealScript will select that pattern as a match. The squelch value further reduces the likelihood that the pattern will be selected as a match over other patterns.
These settings allow you to reduce the likelihood that simple patterns, which may be easy to match, are used more often than they should be. You can also directly add patterns for a character by clicking Add New, similar to using the Add Last feature in the Test Profile dialog.
If all this sounds complicated, don’t worry. The software comes with very sensible default values for most characters, including the "normal" printing patterns for ‘a’, ‘g’, ‘v’, and others. A detailed manual in Doc format is also included. It explains how to use the various dialogs and provides some tips for editing your profile to provide the best recognition possible.
.H1 Final comments
On the whole, I have to say that I have been very happy with the performance of TealScript. Using it, I was able to greatly improve the recognition of my "problem" characters, ‘j’, ‘v’, and ‘8’, as well as begin to write more naturally on my Palm organizer.
On the downside, using this program does slow down the handwriting recognition a bit. I tend to write fast, and the difference in speed was enough for me to notice. However, depending on how fast you write, it may not be a problem for you. So far, at least for me, the benefit of being able to write more naturally outweighs the loss of speed.
TealScript is also somewhat memory intensive — it uses about 122K on my Palm organizer while active, and about 70K while dormant (i.e. with Enable Globally unchecked). Due to its large size, I had to use TRG’s DeFragger program to free up enough contiguous space on my Palm organizer before I could install it successfully. If you don’t already have it, DeFragger is a must have, and can be gotten from PilotGear.
I did experience one crash the day after I first started using TealScript, which required a hard reset of my Palm organizer. However, since then I have downloaded the newest version (1.24 beta) and haven’t had any more crashes. It appears that TealPoint is working hard to fix the bugs in the software and improve its stability.
If you’re not sure that you would want to buy the software but you think it might help you, you can download it and use it for free for on a trial basis. This will give you a chance to play with it and see if it can learn to recognize your writing the way you would like. I am personally satisfied with it, even though it seems to have a few rough edges yet. I’ve also found it very interesting to see how my handwriting looks to the Palm organizer, and trying to optimize my profile to recognize it accurately. If you have a problem with messy handwriting, this will really tell you which part of your writing needs improvement!
You may also wish to download TealPoint’s TealEcho, if you don’t already have it. TealEcho displays your Graffiti strokes as you draw them, which makes it a lot easier to tell how you are writing each character. Used together, TealEcho and TealScript can be very helpful, greatly improving your Palm organizer’s usability by allowing you to write more naturally and accurately.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
TealScript and TealEcho are available from TealPoint Software at http://www.tealpoint.com/.
TRG’s DeFragger is available from http://www.trgnet.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Scott Johnson is a graduate student in Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He can be reached at scottdj@eecs.umich.edu. His web page can be found at http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~scottdj/.
.DISCUSS http://www.component-net.com/webx?13@@.ee6c1f9
