What Ink could be for...

sheepguy42

sheepguy42

AFOL
I have been thinking a lot recently on what Apple was thinking when they brought Ink to Jaguar. It seems to work well, especially when you adjust the settings in its PrefPane, but it isn't all that usefull, as typing is better. Many claim that it is a hint at tablet Macs, but I don't think I see that in the near future, if at all. Keyboards are a great way to put in text, and all you really need is to make them quiet to make laptops more meeting and classroom friendly. Then I put together a couple things:
1. Apple just put in TWAIN support in 10.2, but many scanners still lack drivers, and Apple's recent development history has been to spot weaknesses like this and overcompensate with something great and intuitive (that may be a free alternative to an OK existing app).
2. Apple makes software sometimes to help developers:(mentioned in This blog):Quoted from ADC: "In addition to providing the best web browser for Mac users, one of the goals of Safari is to provide a fast and efficient HTML rendering engine for Mac application developers. Apple is actively
preparing a Safari SDK that will be available later this year."
Perhaps Ink was really made for the maybe-to-come SDK?
3. Ink is great at handwriting recognition.

All this leads me to believe that maybe Apple is going to make some kind of software for scanners to scan in hadwritten notes(and maybe even adapt it to OCR for printed text) and put them in a text editor. Maybe include this as a killer feature of a new word processor to complement Keynote, or a simple iApp (though I don't think Apple will release an iApp text editor; if they release something more advanced than TextEdit but more compatible with other WPs than WorldText it will most likely be like Safari & Mail & Address Book)
Anyway, just a guess....
 
software for scanning hand written notes. ocr?

that would be a great and VERY useful idea . im sure that if apple did somethin like this it would work great. and id us it for sure. but i find i dont think its goin to happen. lets hope that ur right and im wrong:)
 
One thing to keep in mind is that recognizing handwriting as it is being written and recognizing the result a la OCR are very different beasts. Ink doesn't and can't do OCR because it is really recognizing the WAY that the character is made and not the character itself.

I don't have time to really go into the difference but if you have used a PalmPilot think of the way you enter a 'u' vs. a 'v'. In my handwriting they are the same so to get the palm pilot to recognize the difference you have to write the 'v' from right to left instead of from left to right. In that way they are very distinctive to the recognition system.

The simple truth is that handwriting recognition systems need more information than the result to make usefully accurate guesses of what you were writing.

-Eric
 
lurk- I totally understand... and you're right, the vector is important. However, I never said this 'handwriting OCR' would be perfect. Don't most OCR programs let you go in and do corrections? And since Ink lets you add commonly used words to a list, to customize it, and Junk "learns" to work better, maybe this program could "learn" to distinguish the subtle difference between a scrawled 'u' and a scrawled 'v'. Anyway, it really looks like we're gonna see more Office-like components with liller features to make Office look silly, and I am seeing this as more a feature within a Word Processor rather than a whole separate app.
 
I think Inkwell is just great fun -

'I ms the hbedast!'

Is that profound or what??:D

(I wrote: I am the Greatest!)
 
I wouldn't know, I never get to watch The Simpsons. Some clown of a programme controller always puts it on at kiddies tea-time in the UK.

For an extra kick, make your mac speak Inkwell's strange words of wisdom! (there's got to be a humourous book in this sometime...)
 
I like ink OK. I have some nerve damage which makes typing painful sometimes. I am using it now.

Use the ink pad. It works better.
 
Certainly a more natural way of getting type into the comp. I don't use ink except to play with at the moment, but using the Wacom pen has almost completely relieved the RSI in my wrist. Two years of agony gone in two months.

Back to the press-ups!
 
I also think it's part of the "disabled" peoples features (excuse my english if "disabled" is insulting).
Apple put quite some effort into making the os accesible to all kinds of users.
Plus it's a logical extension to the OS to make some use of the tablet (other than navigating or photoshopping). You can also sketch little pictures and export them, so in that way it's already very Apple-ish
 
The funny thing is that it looks like Apple is going to bringing something to the table soon. If I were a betting man I would say in a form factor no larger then that of the previous newton... lets say something between 6 to 9 inches. The reason for this... Apple is suing Unova... This device will be less of a consumer product and geared more towards the high end market... of course everyone is right that the main ingredient will be inkwell. I guess we'll all be seeing our friendly UPS guys walking around with these new Apple gadgets not before to long.
 
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