Smart Pen system (a bit OT)

Posted by Hugh
Apr 28, 2018 at 04:05 PM

Jeffery Smith wrote:
Thanks Hugh. It looks like a Wacom Slate (or something like that) system
>that I looked at a while back. The SmartPens seem to be tiny video
>cameras that can find a place on a grid of special paper with markings
>that are not noticeable. None of the SmartPen systems that I have seen
>in recent searches looks like something well-refined. Some users of the
>NEO system complain that it works briefly and then just creates marks
>that resemble a skipping ballpoint pen. Everything seems to have the
>same issues (at least one or the other). Either the paper is no longer
>sold, the software interface is no longer updated (Canson PaperShow had
>BOTH of those issues), or the pen craps out quickly and there is no
>decent customer support.
> >Just an update…I did find some examples of people using an Apple
>Pencil on an iPad Pro, with Notability being the software. That seems to
>solve all of my issues. Apple will still be around in 5 years, so
>hardware is not an issue, and I don’t need much convincing to upgrade my
>5-year-old iPad to something made in 2017.
> >Jeffery

If you buy an iPad Pro, Notability is OK, and widely used. Goodnotes is another iOS application for writing notes. But handwriting-to-text or “handwriting recognition” is an as yet imperfect technology (as opposed to the pure recording of handwriting on a tablet, which a number of iOS note-taking and sketching applications will happily do). As I say above, in my opinion the developer MyScript is the leader in the race to improve the technology of handwriting recognition.

I’ve used MyScript apps for close-on 15 years, previously on the Mac and very recently on the iPad Pro. I’ve tried a few of the available iOS handwriting recognition applications released by other developers, and MyScript’s iOS note-taking application Nebo is for me the best. MyScript has also developed several other related iOS applications: one resolves handwritten arithmetic calculations. and another can be used to write and convert handwriting to text in other iOS applications.

Just to mention - a markedly less expensive alternative to the iPad Pro is the new iPad, which was announced by Apple a few weeks ago. Like the iPad Pro it will also work with the Apple Pencil. Presumably it can therefore host and support handwriting applications like Notability, Goodnotes and Nebo. But I’ve not had the opportunity to test it, and so I don’t know whether, when equipped with one of these applications, it is as good as the iPad Pro at recording handwriting and converting it to text.