GottaBeMobile - GBM How-To Series #8 : Training Vista for Handwriting Recognition : Tablet PC & Mobile PC News & Video Reviews, and Tablet PC Forums

Monday, April 30, 2007

« Who Let The Wow Out? | Main | Hugo UnBoxes the OQO Model 02 »

GBM How-To Series #8 : Training Vista for Handwriting Recognition

OK, I admit it. I have horribly funky handwriting. Well it's not all that bad, just a mix of cursive, block, all caps, you name it. I dash my seven's, zero's, just to name a couple of oddities. Old habits are hard to break. Go Vista! Finally, someone that actually knows what I'm writing! Handwriting recognition his has to be hands down one of my favorite Vista / tablet features. Wow, Vista handwriting recognition has come a long way since XP!

GBM How-To Series #8 : Training Vista for Handwriting Recognition

Start the recognition process by entering "Handwriting Recognition" into the Vista search bar. Hey, isn't the search bar great!

Select "Teach the recognizer your handwriting style" to get started.

Then select either "Sentences" or "Numbers, symbols, and letters". Numbers, etc is short an sweet. Eight entry pages. The sentences training is much longer. About 50

If you select "Sentences", read the instructions on how to get your best results then , select Next. You will be prompted to enter 50 different sentences. Be sure to write them once and in a normal (not your very, very best) handwriting. The goal here is to give the handwriting engine a chance to see your "normal" style. You can stop at any time, but remember the more you train the better our recognition will be. Simply click "Save for later" if you need to ditch the training.

Successful update of the handwriting recognizer is indicated by this info bubble.

Select "Numbers, symbols, and letters", and you are immediately prompted to enter 8 screens of Numbers, common symbols, and Upper and Lower case letters.

Once you have Vista trained for your handwriting, your input panel experience will be much more accurate. However, it is not perfect. This is due in part to your handwriting not being exactly perfect. Don't take it personally. When mistakes are made, be sure to correct them as not only will your document be correct, but Vista will be less likely to make the same mistake in the future.

Tips and Notes:

To enable "Automatic Learning" click Start, Control Panel, Mobile PC, Tablet PC Settings, then the Handwriting Recognition Tab. Enable personalized recognizer and automatic learning.
Note that you can specify whether you are Right or Left handed by specifying your selection on the General Tab of the Tablet PC Settings as well calibrate the screen.
Take your time and try to complete the 50 sentences, practice makes perfect!
You can even train Vista for another language. Click Here.

GBM How To | Vista

4/30/2007 3:23 AM MST

GBM How-To Series #8 : Training Vista for Handwriting Recognition Comments [14] | Digg This | del.icio.us | Citations

Monday, April 30, 2007 4:59:48 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Thanks for the tips but how do I enable onenote to recognize my writings. I simply cannot find the same function if any, yet.

Willy

Monday, April 30, 2007 7:40:37 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Hey Willy. After you ink in OneNote, highlight the inked paragraph, right click (if you are mouse-bound), or with your pen, press and hold to bring up the right-click menu, then select Convert Handwriting to text. You may be tempted to highlight just a portion of your ink. That won't work. You must get the entire inked paragraph. You will know when you have it selected when you see the bar at the top of your paragraph with the six dots in it. Hope that helps!

Eddie VanDerbeck

Monday, April 30, 2007 7:41:27 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Thank you Eddie :) But does it train onenote to recognize my handwritings as I write more and more? Or as I write more on my text input, it will transfer my writing habits to onenote. Sorry to bug you like this but I use onenote so much for my research paper, notes, studies, etc.

Willy

Monday, April 30, 2007 9:50:24 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Great question! Something I failed to mention is that the more you write (and assuming you make mistakes that are corrected) the more accurate it gets. Remember that this takes place via the TIP (Tablet Input Panel), not OneNote. It is very important to correct any recognition problems as soon as you detect them. Sounds like a lot of work, but well worth it. Now that I think about it, with all that time and effort, we need to know how to back up our handwriting. Sounds like a topic for another How-To.
Ink Well!

Eddie VanDerbeck

Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:39:10 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Pretty sure files are located in C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\InputPersonalization\TrainedDataStore normally hidden system file, probably file ownership issues, with running linked update entries. Looks treacherous without new third-party application made for backup task.

bmhome1

Tuesday, May 01, 2007 10:03:39 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Thank you again Eddie! Now this is my next most anticipated show :)

Willy

Tuesday, May 01, 2007 10:17:30 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

The elements to make recognition training file backups are already in place with Windows Easy Transfer engine for User profile transfers to a new computer. Instead of its all or nothing design, what's needed is specific address to training files made portable and individually restoreable exactly as Dragon Naturally always provided to backup invaluable voice profiles that have so much time investment.

As DNS users soon find out, the higher the level of profile customization from training, the greater the need to easily revert to archived backup if accuracy declines instead after "over training" from adding erroneous entries. Even a single common word correction can.

MS hints at such handwriting pitfall warning that misspells entered into training profiles will degrade overall performance. In reality, such mistakes quite damaging to recognition engines.

Vista's "Report Handwriting Recognition Errors" sub tool offers VERY useful review record of recent error conflicts to see patterns clearer.

As handwriting profiling becoming so fine grained as voice recognition profiles have, a backup strategy to easily revert to known good profile states next becomes important also.

It's the double-edge downside allowing so much detailed customization. Anyone bothering investing the time carefully tuning a profile would be willing making backup archives also. An ideal opportunity for authoring shareware to fill the gap in Vista's otherwise fine recognition design.

bmhome1

Tuesday, May 01, 2007 1:50:42 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Great News! Vistas' Windows Easy Transfer DOES make individual selectable User file backups, including just copying the handwriting training profile to external drive.

One has to deselect all the other defaults checked one by one, but my profile as 54 MB .MIG file was created and successfully overwrote back original profile straight forward.

Easy Transfer is vastly more versatile than just promoted as old-to-new computer helper application. Any individual User or system settings can be chosen to archive as backup.

Vista makes the recovery from backup far easier than the creation process, that's definitely a good tutorial GBM future subject uncovering the depth and potential such powerful tool offers: safety nets that users have control over.

MS crippled Vista Backup options and dumb-downed Defragment to be useless, but Easy Transfer escaped fully featured, just undocumented.

bmhome1

Tuesday, May 01, 2007 2:27:32 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Forgot to mention that there's more than 50 training sentences to plow through. After processing the first 50, relaunch offers up new batch. I stopped after five or six to confirm, anyone up for testing past 100?

I noticed the few extra new sentences added took far longer to process and pegged my tablet CPU until done. Adding new training dramatically increases processing time using DNS also, especially its +500 MB voice profiles. I'm surprised how small handwriting profile files are and relieved not growing exponentially.

bmhome1

Tuesday, May 01, 2007 6:49:20 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I also just successfully copied my Motion 1300's fine-tuned profile over to my Acer 303 tablet, Easy Transfer archive file just dropped onto desktop and clicking it to launch wizard. Process was ridiculously easy and fast. All the tweaked words from Motion got installed. Restores from single file backup perform exceptionally fast.

Interestingly, the install size is listed in Easy Transfer as 54 MB yet the actual archive file is under 3 MB. There's a summary report showing details for each file completed. Must be only data references are used. Very impressive design efficiency. After experiencing how slow and bloated archives are created running Vista Backup, I expected similar results using Easy Transfer. Must have been different project team, this app rocks.

My Motion 1300 at 1Gz is minimum spec to even install Vista, yet gives handwriting recognition real-time response and zero lag, now even fantastic backups speed.

bmhome1

Wednesday, May 02, 2007 2:02:51 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I have also a Tablet PC that I use with the impressive handwriting recognition software MyScript Notes.

My handwriting is pretty bad but I must admit MyScript accuracy is amazing. MyScript Notes also has a training module that increases individual handwriting accuracy.

I believe they also offer a text input method called MyScript Stylus.

Just check out Vision Objects website at http://visionobjects.com and enjoy it!

J. Blain

Wednesday, May 02, 2007 2:10:57 AM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

I couldn't resist trying a 2nd 50 sentence training session to get even better recognition the 1st session clearly added. Writing can be looser and sloppy beyond belief without causing errors.

I tried to be less cursive the unnatural training from just copying words and more like writing out thoughts. The session took far less time, only about a half hour. Writing this post with 100 sentence profile definitely allows even greater scribbling flow without increased errors. Definitely worth the effort, especially if less fuss forming words the better.

I'm certain the dialog box after the 100th sentences encourages even additional sessions clearer than 1st run does. Since the available sentences appear much larger, I would suggest a 10 sentence test to get feel for a more natural style recorded, discard and start real session.

My guess that adding more training to base profile would take much longer to process and merge was correct. The first 50 only took 5-10 minutes to create. The 2nd 50 took almost an hour to finish.

Since there's no progress bar, its far too easy to assume a 100% CPU pegged, non responsive, slowed computer has crashed or hung encouraging forced restart, the worst possible outcome for profile database still writing aborted. Even worse, until the very end all the processing runs in RAM so an idle hard drive so long just sitting really adds to the confusion. Maybe less taxing for newer hardware, but even 15 minutes of heavy backround processing without feedback way too long.

bmhome1

Friday, May 04, 2007 2:53:20 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Am I the only one experiencing the space to write the sentences is way too Small? I can't train it correctly as I never write that small.

Yannick

Thursday, May 17, 2007 12:28:56 PM (Mountain Daylight Time, UTC-06:00)

Hi, guys!

I'm looking for some kind of digital note recorder or pen tablet with hadwriting recognition capabilities, which can be used with a Palm Tungsten 5 and/or (if possible) with a MacIntosh platform. DOES IT EXIST?????
I found the G-Note series (www.geniusnet.com), but it seems to be dedicated to Windows platform. Help!

Thanks!
Aldo

Aldo

Comments are closed.