Ancient (1996?) Tablet PC and Squeak

Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus schwa at cc.gatech.edu
Fri Aug 15 16:46:15 UTC 2003


On Fri, Aug 15, 2003 at 09:37:40AM -0700, David Faught wrote:
> Well, I've stepped in it again.  I bought a used, old tablet PC with
> the idea of doing cool, wirelessly mobile things fairly inexpensively
> and found out something I didn't know before.  The Windows 95/98
> handwriting recognition software commonly used on these things is
> licensed "per install".  In other words, if it gets re-installed on a
> PC that it was formerly installed on, it counts as another install and
> is charged for again.

Do you have a copy of that software?  How would you be charged, the
honor system?  If so, and it is a personal (not company) machine, then
I'd just install the MS software.  They would be extremely unlikely
audit you.  Of course, disregard this if you'd be wracked with guilt
at cheating them out of their hard-earned cash.

> 
> It happens that on the particular tablet that I bought, the hard drive
> was wiped before the sale, as a reasonable precaution.  So now there is
> no handwriting recognition unless I want to pay the licensing fee for
> the software again (which I don't).  The pen does work, but strictly as
> a mouse pointer.  I do have a regular keyboard too, but that detracts
> somewhat from the "cool, wirelessly mobile" idea.
> 
> Enter Squeak.  I was planning to use Squeak on this tablet anyway, but
> now I'm thinking that it may be the primary application, and using
> Genie should work for lots of things.  For me, the one big lack in
> living in a Squeak environment is a full-featured web browser.  So my
> question is this:  how feasible is it to use Squeak in place of the
> native handwriting recognition, copying text out of Squeak and pasting
> it into other native OS applications, like the web browser?  How usable
> will this really be?  I'll let you know after I try it, but I'm looking
> for other experience or opinions.

If I were doing this, I'd write a small morph that would recognize
characters and append them to the clipboard.  Run Squeak in a small
window just big enough for this morph.  You could add extra goodies
like a 'clear' button (pretty much necessary), a 'delete' button if
the last character was wrong, and a 'clear' button to clear the
clipboard.  It would be quite easy.

Joshua

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