Handwriting Recognition on DS

JamesO writes "Zi Corporation has announced a licensing agreement with Nintendo that will allow developers to make use of handwriting recognition. PDAs have been offering handwriting recognition for some time and with the DS's touch screen it seemed inevitable that the console would eventually gain handwriting recognition technology. An agreement between Zi Corporation and Nintendo means that DS developers will be able to utilise Zi Decuma handwriting recognition technology when creating software for the handheld."

SDK

[kevin_conaway]

What kind of SDK is available for the DS? What language(s) can you use?

On a side note, are there any phones / pdas that have a Python sdk available?

Eat Up Martha

[thatguywhoiam]

This certainly makes the DS more interesting to me (not that I'd use it as a PDA or anything). But if you can jot notes into the thing, and have it OCR'd for you, it would make it a lot handier than it is right now. Can anyone comment intelligently on how the DS CPU would handle such a thing?

Re:Eat Up Martha

[RevAaron]

The NDS main CPU is pretty slow- 66 MHz. I've used Decuma on Palm OS on a 200 MHz ARM (Sony Clie NX70v), and used Decuma fine, albeit a bit slowly, with the Clie underclocked at 100 MHz to save power. Decuma is decent HWR; it is in between the character-based stuff like Graffiti and the proper and good word-sentence based real HWR of the Newton or PocketPC's Transcriber or Calligrapher. It makes you write in a box- but you write a full word, it recognizes it letter by letter, and then you have to press a button to actually accept/write the text. Or make corrections, overwriting maybe 'e' for the misrecognized 'o'; then you press that button. On Palm OS, Decuma is about the best you're going to get if you want real HWR, but it isn't too horrible.

Animal Crossing DS

[vodevil]

I sure hope they put this to good use in Animal Crossing DS, it was a pain in the butt to use the controller to write letters to the villagers.

Dictionary

[dancingmad]

There's already a Japanese-English dictionary for the DS, but it's so so at best. A good handwriting system for the machine would be an incredible boon - often times I'm presented with a kanji I simply don't know the reading for (and I can't input it into my electronic dictionary's QWERTY interface). I do know enough kanji to be able to copy many down by writing them, so being able to write say a compund and having the DS spit out a list of possible readings and defintions would be amazing and would help me learn Japanese in the real world (here in Japan anyway) more easily as I could begin decoding stuff in the world witout need of my onerous New Nelson Kanji dictionary.

Pen is Mightier

[Doc Ruby]

I've really been disappointed by the tiny progress in using a stylus for input. A decade and a half ago, "pen computing" was "the next big thing". Microsoft even marketed a "Word for Windows for Workgroups for Pen Computing" edition (presumably with a "Spellcheck for Word for..."). The Palm Pilot actually delivered on the Apple Newton's promise to use our pen skills to deal with little mobile devices. But now even Palm devices, like Treos, usually disregard the pen. I think it's not so much the lack of writing recognition (which is more than adequate, though it does have problems), as the lack of any unique pen advantages to compensate for having to use a separate pen rather than an integrated keyboard.

Pens offered an opportunity to use an expressive, intuitive gestural interface. Even mouse gestures have run circles around pen gestures. I'd like to use a pen to indicate multiple selections, associations, layouts, flows, scales, shapes. I think an interface that used chinese symbols as commands on selected objects would have tremendous popularity, and maybe even work with a huge new global zeitgeist that could jump all kinds of boundaries represented by keyboards, especially QWERTY.

We still have the opportinity to use pointers for a really expressive, simple interface "for the masses". I built a "light pen" for my Atari PC over 20 years ago. Even Treos still come with styluses, and now the DS will recognize handwriting. Most people use pens, probably even more than keyboards, especially worldwide. That input mode isn't going away, even if it's not being pushed. Even though OSes and apps still haven't delivered on their potential, there's still lots of pent-up (pun intended) demand to use them. I don't think the breakthru lies in dropping the pen in favor of a fingertip, though I'd like to see some working software that tested that avenue. I think that once we get a pen-centric UI paradigm that does things keyboards and mice cannot, we'll get pens that people won't put down.

Re:Nintendo is Desparate

[juched]

I actually created an account on slash dot just to reply to this initial posting. It seems to me that everyone of his/her comments was inaccurate. The DS is outselling the PSP. Cartridges load much faster and hence the DS does not have the crippling load times of the PSP. The wireless is standard 802.11b and hence it can connect to the PC if the software was written for it. And yes, the DS can play only, as we will all be doing when Mario Kart comes out! Don't even get me started on keeping up with current technology. Nintendo invents the new technology... The examples of analong stick, shoulder buttons, rumble and more are all good examples of that. Just because the didn't use DVD or CD? They might be easy to create, but they are also just as easy to copy! No wonder they are trying to stay away.

Re:The loss of Penmanship.

[mrgreen4242]

I was going to moderate this topic, but wanted to post about the difference between the ability to write and the skill of penmanship. They are not at all the same. Being able to write simply means that you know what a letter looks like and are physically capible of holding a writing utensil with enough dextarity to form that symbol.

Good penmanship, on the otherhand, is almost an art. It's a step below calligraphy, and a step above your average scrawl. My HANDWRITING is horrible, but I can still write; I have seen some beautiful penmanship on old letters, though. I agree that the ability to write like that is fairly unneeded now-a-days, but I don't think that the GP poster was suggesting we give up handwriting all together.

Re:Finally

[JonXP]

The DS has a microphone built in. Theoretically you could already do that with your voice, unlike another popular handheld system.