From: thomasp@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Patrick Thomas)
Subject: Reality was a friend of mine
Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 18:43:36 GMT

Sorry, the following is a little bit out of order.

Juri Munkki:

> I don't like pens for writing, but I'm not planning on doing any word
> processing with a pen. I'm happy if I can write a short note or two
> and use a few customized PDA applications.

You remember paper notes ? They are small, usually quick n' dirty,
short - to the extent of loosing much meaning two days later - and, above
all, easy lost. The only thing a PDA (as I happen to think of it now)
would do better is the 'meaning thing' and the 'loosing thing'. Well,
without actually ASCIIing your notes, there has to be a way to
search the piles of notes you'd probably enter into your PDA. Two
solutions at first glance: type-in simple keywords which are
to be ASCIIied or better (we'll do it over here :) provide an
effficient, object-oriented code/hash and search mechanism on "ink".
'Loosing' and 'meaning' join when you provide some sort of hypertext
functionality (as does PenPoint), meaning you have to (better
instantly) connect your note to some sort of data already
memorized within your PDA. By all accounts, cursive handwriting
recognition would be better ;)

Rion Cassidy:

> Could also be that many of the pen-computing companies don't have net
> connections.  I KNOW that GRiD doesn't; I used to work there.

GRiD has access to comp.sys.pen (not directly, of course). Ask
Lilly Tao. As for GO, around 10% of the YES-votes for comp.sys.pen
came from GO Corp employees.

> There are a lot of pen apps that do not use handwriting at all.  There
> are other ways to get the info into the system than handwriting, and
> many customers who are very happy with pen-based computers that only do
> limited printed handwriting recognition.

I know of one company which has Notepads in daily use and is satisfied
with 'limited printed handwriting recognition' - 'cause they don't use
it. I'll be in Spain in September to get together with at least
two companies using GRiDPads daily - maybe I'll change my mind 'til
then.

James H. Coombs:

> Justification?  What is the problem with the pen as a pointing device?
> Pointing with a pen is much more direct than pointing with a mouse.

That might be true when you don't use the keyboard simultaneously - have
you tried working with a Momenta PenTop using the pen instead of a
mouse ? You'd get crazy. Any double-click would make the screen
'wobbling' to an extent, it would get unsuable. You had to hold the
screen with one hand and double-click with the other. Well, I have not
used the NEC SL20/P but I assume it to have the same problem - as
any PenTop will have (watch out for Comdex :). A PenTop is supposed
to be a notebook *also*, so there is no real solution to that problem in shape
of a pen. I don't work for NCR, but try the FingerMouse ! Unfortunately,
its exclusive to the NCR 3170 notebook (although developed by Panasonic,
strange it is).

>>       * they don't hook up to available wireless communication means

> Why is this essential?

I'd like to have group-information sharing, group-scheduling and
group-playing-games (in that order) when I spend 500 US$ for
an electronic gadget :]

Hey, I still believe in pens - ok ?

Patrick