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Apple’s Inkwell doesn’t always ink well

Recently I purchased a Wacom Tablet to better exploit the brush features of progams like Corel Painter X and ArtRage 2. For those not familiar with this type of device, you can think of it as a larger, stiff plastic mouse-pad with a cordless mouse and pen-like digitizer. They’re usually pressure sensitive and permit a greater freedom of artistic input or hand-writing capture. I was surprised to see the cover of the Wacom Tablet box smothered in a profusion of “Works with Vista!” and “Vista-ready!” rhetoric which went as far as requiring a velcro-secured box tab to furnish more space for the apparent integration with Vista. The Vista-ready features included “revolutionary technology” to enable Windows ability to read and interpret handwriting, directly from the tablet. My sarcastic grin emboldened, thoroughly nonplussed.

Wacom Tablet

Recently I purchased a Wacom Tablet to better exploit the brush features of progams like Corel Painter X and ArtRage 2. For those not familiar with this type of device, you can think of it as a larger, stiff plastic mouse-pad with a cordless mouse and pen-like digitizer. They’re usually pressure sensitive and permit a greater freedom of artistic input or hand-writing capture. I was surprised to see the cover of the Wacom Tablet box smothered in a profusion of “Works with Vista!” and “Vista-ready!” rhetoric which went as far as requiring a velcro-secured box tab to furnish more space for the apparent integration with Vista. The Vista-ready features included “revolutionary technology” to enable Windows ability to read and interpret handwriting, directly from the tablet. My sarcastic grin emboldened, thoroughly nonplussed.

You see, I’m a Mac convert.

Having converted to a Mac by the praise-worthy Powerbook G4 (likely scoffed at by the more recent Apple technorati) I was able to look at the generously slathered coating of Vista-ready features the tablet would enable and gladly proclaim to the uninterested box “Apple’s had those features for YEARS already!” Since version 10.2 (Jaguar) Apple’s OS X has included text-recognition software known as InkWell. Few traditional users have ever seen it, however, because it only becomes active when a tablet digitizer is attached to the computer.

Plugging in the USB cable for the Wacom Graphire tablet brought up a new Preference Pane titled Ink (even previous to the installation of Wacom’s own software).

Teach Me, Tune me.

Once selected, the Ink Preference Pane gives you 4 tabs of options. The bulk of the fine-tuning occurs on the first tab and its concomitant options list. Here you can tell OS X how widely spaced your particular handwriting is to help it better interpret your text or set the delay before OS X starts to translate. Other options let you set when Ink decides that your tablet motions are text versus basic mouse/cursor movement. You can even have Ink generate a scribbling sound as audio feedback that you’ve entered a text-entry mode.

Multiple Languages Supported

Ink also understands and parses handwriting in multiple languages, although the selections are limited to English, French, and German. Algorithmically speaking, each probably requires a slightly different set of linguistic parameters to parse, and I strongly suspect that the InkWell technology is consulting OS X’s built in Dictionary program to adjust its interpretations in accordance with context.

Gestures/Guesstures

In addition to parsing text, InkWell also contains a rudimentary gesture system with simple pen-based characters used for basic editing commands. Cutting, copying, pasting, undo, tabs, spaces, etc… are all accessed with these unique tablet-entered characters, and the third tab of the Ink preference pane will show them animated so you know just how they are entered. Having been a long-time Palm Pilot user, it has taken me some practice to get used to these unalterable gestures, but they work well once learned.

Therein lies the principle short-coming to these built-in gesture facilities: a near total lack of customization. Individual editing marks/gestures may be deactivated from the list by clicking a check-box next to each, but no accomodation is made for custom gestures or short-cuts. I’d love to be able to generate a gesture for basic OS X commands like Cmd+Q to quit an application, Cmd+W to close the foremost window, or even open Safari. This kind of functionality can be supplemented using freeware software, however, such as the highly recommended Flying Meat’s free FlyGesture, which itself does not require a tablet.

Teach InkWell your own vocabulary

The fourth Preference Pane tab allows you to enter your own custom words. I thought that being a molecular biologist/microbiologist I could trip it up with something I take for granted, “Escherichia coli”. Ink beat me to it, however, returning a message that that word already part of its vocabulary. Maybe I should move on to something like “metalloprotease”.

In practice…

Once enabled by the presence and activity of a functioning tablet digitizer, Ink interprets text-entry in two methods:

1. Enter handwriting or doodles in the Ink Window.
2. Enter handwriting anywhere using Write Anywhere.

The Ink Window is a floating window with thin blue lines, similar to notebook paper, that one can write on. After a brief delay, the handwritten text is parsed into its text equivalent. A button at the bottom of the window permits sending this parsed text into whatever the top-most application is or clearing all input. You can write as large or as small as you want in the Ink Window to have your handwriting parsed, but I found it to more accurately capture my handwriting when done large (capital letter taking up 4 lines). No matter what size the text is entered by hand-writing it always comes out the same size in the Ink Window.

Two small buttons in the lower-left of the Ink Window allow changing from Text Mode to Drawing mode. Drawing mode replaces the lined-paper feel of the Ink Window with a broad grid. Drawings, text, and doodles done here are not interpreted, but can still be pasted into the top-most application as a graphic, handy for capturing signatures. Curiously enough, the Drawing Mode was also aware of the pressure-sensitivity of my Wacom Tablet, and I found that with a little adjustment to my drawing style, I could shade drawings much like with a smooth pencil although the pressure curve felt considerably different than using a real pencil. That’s more likely a tablet/pen issue as opposed to Ink, however.

At the top of the Ink Window are four modifier buttons, representing the Command/Apple key, the Shift key, the Alt key and the Ctrl key. I had a hard time figuring out how to employ these, and Apples own InkWell documentation made it fairly difficult to find out how to pragmatically apply these. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you have your Wacom hooked up but no keyboard. Theoretically, to accomplish the keyboard shortcut of Cmd+Q to quick an application one would click the Command (clover-leaf-looking) button and then enter “q” on the tablet. Not so. I have never been able to enter any keyboard shortcuts properly using that method, but I DID discover that if you double-click one of the modifier-key-buttons that it “holds it down,” enabling me to enter multiple additional modifiers of letters to accomplish the keyboard short-cut. For example, the execute a Cmd+”Q” quitting shortcut, I switch to the application I want to quit, enter the Ink Window, double-click the Cmd button, then enter “Q” by my handwriting. The application then closes. The downside, however, is that I have to go back to the Ink Window and click the Cmd button one more time to release it from its “hold-down” mode or everything I subsequently handwrite in is interpreted as being done in conjunction with the Command key being held down. Not exactly intuitive. In short, don’t forget your keyboard – it’s still way quicker to put the Wacom tablet down and manually execute a keyboard shortcut by hand on the keyboard then attempting to use the Ink Window.

Write Anywhere?

The other text-entry method, Write Anywhere, permits text-entry anywhere on the screen. When this entry mode is activated the mouse cursor onscreen still functions as a regular mouse cursor when handling buttons, scrollers, sliders, and other GUI elements. Click on a place where you can enter text, text-box for example, however, and then your next strokes are interpreted on-screen as handwriting. As text is entered anywhere on-screen, the space underneath the cursor instantly becomes yellow-paper with large dotted blue-lines, similar to early grade school (think first-grade) writing paper. Again, writing larger here lent my handwriting more accuracy.

I found this method to be somewhat disconcerting, however. Sometimes in reaching to click a button or move a slider, Write Anywhere would interpret my intended GUI manipulations as text-entry, and a letter “i” or “l” was often entered in whatever text-box I had used last. Likewise, selecting text in a word-processor versus entering a dash or back-spacing with Write Anywhere felt virtually impossible, with often random results. To make this work, one either has to spend a great deal of time fine-tuning the text-recognition times in the Preference Pane (i.e.: Length of stroke before text is recognized, delay before handwriting is translated to text, etc…) or assign a short-cut key or button to the activation/deactivation of the Write Anywhere mode. I chose to allocate one of my physical Wacom Tablet buttons to this purpose and it works great as long as I remember to change modes in between entries of text.

It’s how you write, right?

Some of the biggest questions one might ask is regarding Apple’s InkWell are “If I get a tablet, can I get rid of my keyboard?” or “How accurate is the handwriting recognition?” Maybe even “How fast is the handwriting recognition?”

In my hands, Ink properly translated my handwriting about 60-75% of the time, granted, my handwriting is pretty sloppy, especially when I’m trying to enter information quickly, as when typing. Below are a few examples of translations done by Ink, both from the Ink Window and from Write Anywhere Mode:


abcdefghijklm
Ink Window:abcdefghijk / M
Write Anywhere:abcdefghijklm

nopqrstuvwxyz
Ink Window:ROpqrstUVWXY2
Write Anywhere:MOpqrstUVWXYZ

0123456789 10
Ink Window:012345678910
Write Anywhere:0123 456789 10

Steve Jobs loves Bill Gates
Ink Window:Steve Jobs loves Bill Gates
Write Anywhere:Steve Jobs loves Bill Gates

Microsoft Vista Blows Goats
Ink Window:Microsoft Vista Blows Goats
Write Anywhere:Microsoft Vista Bbws Goats

I love my Wacom Graphire Tablet.
Ink Window:I love my Wacom Graphire %6kt
Write Anywhere:I love my Wacom Gaphire Tabbt

…but I could really use the AWESOME features of an Intuous tablet.
Ink Window:- – - but I could really USC the Awesome Features of an Intoous tablet
Write Anywhere:___ but Icould really Use the AWESOME features Of an Intuous Tablet

The quick brown fox
Ink Window:The quick brown fox
Write Anywhere:The quick brown fox

Hoy! Punctuation a problem, ‘eh? (parenthetically speaking, of course).
Ink Window:Hoy! Punctuation d problem, i eh? (parenthetically speaking, Of course).
Write Anywhere:Hoy! Punctuation a pro 6 km, ` eh? (Parenthetically speaking, of course).

As you can see, the largest errors in recognition tend to be with the state of capitalization, although sometimes it’s not immediately obvious why it picks certain symbols (such as “Tablet” being translated as “%6kt”). Accuracy appeared to be greater when complete words were entered, rather than individual numbers or symbols. As I mentioned previously, it seems that Ink might be using contextual information in all of what’s handwritten in the interpretation of characters. For instance, it’s much more likely that someone would write “how are you?” as opposed to “how ^Tc you?”

The speed of entry will probably vary by the system you have. For single words and very short sentences, entry works just fine. The longer the word or sentence, however, the longer the perceived lag. On some words, I was writing a full second ahead of what actually appeared on-screen. If you have a fairly recent setup, however, I suspect this will become a non-issue.

Ink has its place, although it’s certainly no complete replacement for the keyboard. Graphic artists not wanting to step up to the keyboard from their tablets will appreciate the fact that this is already included in the operating system, and it works fairly well. Overall, I’m pleased using InkWell to enter quick Layer titles or descriptions in Photoshop, and maybe even for switching the occasional tool by faked keyboard command. Trying to write even a brief email using Ink has proved frustrating for me, however, and I dare-say the keyboard will still remain an integral part of my work-flow, even in graphics applications like Photoshop and Painter X.