Graffiti for Android scribbles Palm OS memories all over Google's platform
By Ross Miller 
posted July 16th 2010 9:32AM
posted July 16th 2010 9:32AM
posted July 16th 2010 9:32AM
powered by gdgt
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
@Bioran23
Android has everything it seems. You might be surprised to know that you can download an app called LED Desire Light that not only lights up your LEDs when you need a flashlight, but will also flash morse code. Just enter in the text and click the "Morse" button. Don't know where you'd ever use it, but funny that it's out there .... gotta love Android!
One small backwards step for man...
Now I miss my old Palm Tungsten. Even though the only thing I ever really did with it was play games at work.
@verruckt8
Yeah - thats what Palm OS device were great at! Nobody questioned you at work for carrying one around so you could secretly play games!
Doom 2 on Palm OS devices IS STILL better than on a iPhone or any 'touch screen only' devices due to the presence of the D-Pad. I played all the Doom wads on my Tungsten T and T3 at work or on the subway. I have access to lots of smartphones today because of my work, but nothing has rivaled my Palm OS gaming days. Some physics type touch screen games are good but i really miss having a D-Pad.
No Android Market link?! That's just lazy, Engadget. Actually I'm the lazy one, but you should cater to me, the non-paying customer anyway! Please?
@Socrates024
A QR code would be nice...
Graffiti is great on a stylus based device as that is what it's designed for. I don't think it would work better than a straight touch keyboard in modern capacitive touch screens.
@pika2000 I don't know, the portrait keyboard is so small I misspell everything. I'm sure I could trace graffiti scribbles with more accuracy.
OK, lets try this again... I don't understand why prewreckless' post was downranked. He/she makes a valid point. Graffitti was designed for resistive screens and stylus-based input. I too wonder how usable it can be in the age of capacitive screens and finger-based input.
Wow. Surprised iphoners have yet to crash the thread.
@hitdog042 Because even they are also caught in the nostalgia or just plain don't get it and don't even have a flaming troll response.
The amazing thing about Graffiti is that it actually lead to millions of people learning a new shorthand / input method. Since the introduction of the QWERTY keyboard, the only other successful alphabetic text entry system to see mass consumer adoption was of course phone keypads / t9 input (which has always been a painful stop-gap IMHO). I'm not counting handwriting recognition because probably the most popular one (i think? correct me if i'm wrong) would actually be the Windows Mobile implementation - but I don think that was ever adopted to nearly the degree that Graffiti was; most people i knew use the crappy virtual keyboard because the handwriting rec (especially on earlier versions of Win Mob) wasn't that great.
Thats quite an accomplishment for Palm. And so far there hasn't been any other (I consider virtual keyboards to just be a variation on the QWERTY keyboard of course). I am dying to try out Swype though.
In fact, i am totally used to Grafiti from Palm times, and currently use it on WM (it is called "block recognizer" there). I am happy to hear someone ported it to Android :-)
I too have a good memory of graffiti from my old Palm Zire. Sadly it was one of the last PDAs from Palm - but very cheap. Compressing a 20MB video to fit on a 1.8MB and watching it on a monochrome display was priceless. I still have it somewhere in the drawer.
And back then you only had a few options - small on-screen keyboard, hardware QWERTY or graffiti. And graffiti was probably the best. Now the on-screen keyboards are much much better. Keyboards that use dictonary (swype) are crap. They are not if you only need one language (English) but I don't think that there is swype dictonary for Slovenian language. And even if it did - changing from English to Slovenian and back would be pain in the ***.
That's cool. I was actually getting good with Graffiti when I got rid of my Palm back in the day. Don't have an Android though but it's good that it's available to those that do.
i don't understand how people can criticize adding graffiti as an input option. swype is great but it uses the same algorithms as T9. i'm a med student and swype/t9 both hang up on a lot of words. if you use any number of nontypical words, you have to switch to abc mode because of it. graffiti works really well. i wouldn't do everyday text messages with it. but if i wanted to jot down notes that use proper nouns or specialized words, it's great. graffiti is no slower than handwriting and in many instances is faster. like for a letter "t", you don't have to do 2 strokes like in handwriting, it's one continuous stroke.
handwriting is indeed becoming a dying breed apparently. people have forgotten how to write cursive text. and block text is becoming chicken scratch.
They should have used Graffiti 2. It was amazing for text input. I used to take nots in class on my Sony Clie TJ37. I could write faster with Graffiti 2 than I could ever type. I wish someone would create a G2 and T9 number pad keyboard for jailbroken iPhones!
@synthesis777
I think it really is a matter of preference though, I remember when G2 came out a lot of G1 people complained about the fact that G2 required 2 strokes for a number of characters, while the strength of G1 is that it only required 1. Many people saw G2 as purely a compromise that Palm did because of the lawsuit over G1 (Palm was being sued by Xerox who claimed that it violated there patent on Unistrokes technology - Xerox won the patent lawsuit, though eventually Palm had it overturned)
This. Is. Horrible.
@OmegaThirteen
Well it is cuz you were but a wee little one when Palm ruled the universe of hand held devices.
It's awesome how everyone talks about swype like it is a sweet android-only feature. The iPhone got shapewriter in 2008, and the concept was not exactly new prior to that
Bury me, the truth hurts.
Kinda makes me wonder what Hawkins and Dubinsky are up to these days. It's funny, but I last regularly used Grafitti (well Grafitti-like input) on my Motion M1200 tablet...still the best pen input for that computer.
As a current iphone user, I must say that because of graffiti my next phone will be an android phone. Thanks to my days of using a palm pda all of my notes in school ended up being written in graffiti shorthand. I like it a lot better than any cell phone keyboard, save for swype which I haven't used yet.
I thought I was the last person still using this. (I have a Sprint Diamond.) My handwriting has switched to a variation of this (I cross the A's and loop up to fill in the F's, and write my H's like a backwards "N"). Thanks to this program, my choice between switching to AT&T to get an iPhone and getting an Evo has now been made.
Hooray! I like this IME because I don't have to look at the keyboard when typing. With keyboard-based IMEs you focus the keyboard rather than what you're typing which means you have to proofread after each word or at the end of a message. With a drawing-based IME you can watch the text input area and fix mistakes as they occur, which is faster for me even given that drawing the letters is slower.
I just wish my pre acted like a palm device bring back all the old shot cuz that's why I got this damn phone lol even tho I'm happy with it now !!!! I don't c y they built this phone and left out the fun of old we used to do so much with our pdaz !!!!!
this thing is a POS!
Brings fond memories learning to write Kanji way back
So awesome, not something that will replace the HTC sense keyboard for me, but is really fun to input text like I used to on my palm TX (my first handheld device, and my first step at becoming a geek).