Windows 11 Now Lets You Write Anywhere You Can Type (theverge.com) 51
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is starting to roll out new changes to Windows Ink that let you write anywhere you can type in Windows 11. After months of previewing the changes, the handwriting-to-text conversion now works inside search boxes and other elements of Windows 11 where you'd normally type your input. [...] If you have a Surface device with a stylus or any other Windows tablet that supports Windows Ink then you'll immediately see this new feature if you head into Settings and start to write into a search box, or in other text edit fields in Windows 11.
wait, you couldn't already do this? (Score:3)
You could do this on WinCE years and years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Writing on screen keyboards existed in pretty much all mobile and tablet oriented OS's either as native keyboards or keyboard add-ons for as long as I can remember. I recall guy I was with in the military had this weird Palm personal assistant thingy back in early 2000s, and even that supported just clicking anywhere and then just writing it with the stylus (which was the only way to do inputs on the device, this is really early monochrome touch screen stuff).
Re: (Score:2)
I recall guy I was with in the military had this weird Palm personal assistant thingy back in early 2000s, and even that supported just clicking anywhere and then just writing it with the stylus (which was the only way to do inputs on the device, this is really early monochrome touch screen stuff).
I've had two GRiD pen computers, the 1910 and the 2390. The latter was also sold by Tandy and Casio under different names, it had a 384x512 grey display with a resistive touch overlay. The 1910 had a 640x400 CGA grey display (3 greys plus on and off, IIRC) and a capacitive pen on a wire. I still have it, although I have no good battery packs for it since they were NiCD and bled out, I might rebuild them someday with NiMH. I was able to put the software (GEOWORKS, aka PC GEOS) from the Zoomer on it, though.
Re: wait, you couldn't already do this? (Score:2)
Whoops I forgot to explain why that is relevant. Palm computing's first product was the geoworks-based software for the gridpad 2390. And that's also where graffiti first appeared, though it didn't come with it. Their original software actually allowed natural handwriting in both block and cursive. The system came with like four pen-based apps that were super fast to reload because their data files were basically just memory dumps, but that also meant getting the data out of them was hard. Obviously they sw
Re: (Score:2)
Except it was awful. I don't know, maybe it worked fine for Chinese and Japanese where there's an established order and direction for strokes. I have a vague recollection of something similar for English, some military thing, but I can't find anything about it now. Oh, and there was Palm's Graffiti and their 'learn this all over again' Graffiti 2. Whatever, I just tapped things out with the virtual keyboard, when a physical one wasn't an option.
I was excited about the possibilities of what we called '
Re: (Score:3)
The military thing was a magnesium-cased version of the GRiDPad 1910. I think they might have also had a version of one of their later 386-based armtops for the military, I'm not sure. However, the military ran DOS on them AFAIK. I put PalmConnect (GEOWORKS with drivers to talk to the GRiDPad 2390) on my plastic (non-military) 1910. With Graffiti!
Re: (Score:3)
You could do it on Windows 10 too, until Windows 11 came out and fucked over all the "Ink" improvements made in Windows 7, 8, and 10. Basically Windows 11 is the worst version of Windows to run on a tablet device since Windows XP. If you want a real laugher, just try to use a web browser on a tablet device with a High-DPI screen. Hitting the tiny little X on a tab you want closed is hilariously hard, and there's no way to scale up the UI widgets anymore without deep registry fuckery.
But hey, I guess rest
Re: wait, you couldn't already do this? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just go into screen settings and increase display scaling. Everything gets bigger, including the tabs and their close icons. The real issue is that you need to scale it to ridiculous proportions to make the touch targets easy to hit, which makes everything else unusable.
As for handwriting on Windows, it's never been as good as Samsung's on Android. Maybe that's what Microsoft is aiming for here. On Samsung devices, once the textbox is selected you just scrawl anywhere and it gets it perfect 99% of the time.
Re: wait, you couldn't already do this? (Score:2)
No, you could only do this if the apps were built for it. It is perfectly possible to build a Windows CE app without handwriting recognition.
Universal input regardless of app support was introduced in Mac OS X 10.2 some 20 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
It is perfectly possible to build a Windows CE app without handwriting recognition.
The handwriting recognition isn't in the app. It's in the OS. I used to have an iPaq H2215 and I could handwrite into literally every app I ever loaded on it, no matter how old. I also had a HTC Raphael 110, and a Dt360C GEODE-based tablet too, and same on all of those as well. The fact it worked on 3/3 of the WinCE devices I've owned suggests to me that in fact you are wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the app has to be custom built to accept handwriting. Yes, it works, because Microsoft and others compiled various apps to use the handwriting engine, but you can't compile an eg. WinForms Windows app for Windows CE and expect handwriting to work in your text fields.
From what I remember, you needed to link Hwx-something libraries and create a context that allows your app to call the handwriting engine, then you'll get a handle which you can send the points you receive from the screens to the engine (I'm
Pffft ... (Score:4, Funny)
Windows 11 Now Lets You Write Anywhere You Can Type
I've been able to do that with my typewriter for, like, forever.
[ For you youngsters, a typewriter [wikipedia.org] is ... :-) ]
Privacy Concerns (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It doesn't need to be this way. There is no reason that we need to offload that processing to some privacy raping server somewhere. We can do all of this stuff locally. Even mobile devices are powerful enough to handle this stuff. They even come with TPUs or NPUs these days. In the absolute worst case, it'll need a short training session.
We're not helpless here either. Complain loudly. Write your congress critter. Bitch and moan about it at every opportunity like idiots do over imaginary culture war
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
They still can't get mouse clicks to register every time. Every day I have to go back and click something to change focus because the first click didn't register, or double-click it a second time. I've gotten so used to double-clicking not working that a large portion of the time I'm clicking once to highlight then hit the Enter key.
Just as bad, highlighting a word or sentence, then right-click copy doesn't always work either. Have to go back and do everything all over again.
If they can't get the simple t
Re: (Score:1)
One think that I found yesterday is that if you copy a filename, you _cannot_ paste it directly into word. You have to paste it into a text-editor first! How incredible stupid is that? That is something that should have worked reliably 30 years ago and they _still_ cannot get it right?
My personal take is that MS has lost control of their OS and Office bundle some years ago because of just too much technological debt, i.e. too many bad decisions piling up. At the same time, the pressure from attacks, malware
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, really? What version of office did this hilarity start in?
I used open office and then libre office as much as I could get away with for last decade and then some, and I've never experienced anything so hilariously stupid. Is it about formatting?
Re: (Score:1)
That was my work computer (not under my system administration) and just copying into an editor in a cygwin terminal fixed things. (I got them to allow me cygwin, so I have at least some decent tools.) I think this is o356. It is win10 though. Tried it several times with different filenames, all no dice. There must be something fundamentally wrong with the Windows Clipboard. It probably kept some metadata and then word just refused to insert that. Oh, and no "paste text only" option before using that cygwin
Re: (Score:3)
There must be something fundamentally wrong with you because it works fine on the computer I'm using (Win 10 Pro, O365).
Re: (Score:3)
Very odd, because I routinely have to copy stuff across software in various versions of windows, and I never ran into problem you have.
The main problem I have is that it actually does conserve formatting, resulting in copying from WYSIWYG editors to full text editors like Thunderbird email writing taking full formatting. So that copying from black text on white page Vivaldi to dark mode Thunderbird results in dark text by default in it. I basically have to copy it into something that strips formatting and t
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure there's a mod for that. I'm just too lazy to install it.
Re: (Score:2)
As I wrote a previous post, something occurred to me. Some security software can be configured to wipe clipboard if it thinks data is a password. Could it be that your terminal is blacklisted on this sort of security software and when your antivirus sees the attempt to copy paste something taken from explorer into your terminal, it just wipes the clipboard "for your safety and security"?
It sounds implausible, but I've seen dumber security "solutions" in corporate IT.
Re: (Score:2)
I just copied a file name and pasted it in Word. What you say is not true.
Re: (Score:2)
If they can't get the simple things to work,
Because it's too humble a problem for them to care about.
Then again: "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." - J.W. Gardner
Re: (Score:2)
Well, simple things are what makes a system usable. Or not. Because these are the things you do all the time and you do not want to think about and that just have to work and do so fast and easy.
Also this one:
Someone who considers himself too important for small jobs is often too small for important jobs -- Jaques Tati
Re: (Score:2)
That's a really strange bug. Are you sure this isn't something among the lines of bad mouse switches/interference for wireless mouse/bad drivers/cpu load spikes?
Re: (Score:2)
My personal pet-peeve is that when I drag and drop something in explorer and hover over the target directory a nanosecond too long, it will expand it and you almost invariably end up moving your crap somewhere it doesn't belong.
Every single fucking time.
Re: (Score:2)
They still can't get mouse clicks to register every time.
I don't think that's exactly right, although it's not totally wrong either. :) I think what exactly is happening is that there is a delay before mouse clicks reach Windows GUI apps. So if you click something and then quickly move the mouse, the click turns into a drag. By the same token, a window title bar drag turns into a drag across the ribbon or button bar or whatever.
No idea if this affects anything else because I am only using Windows at work now, occasional VM use aside.
Re: (Score:2)
XP worked more or less fine. So did 7. And they really nailed backwards compatibility with their family of OS until the recent one. Could run old stuff that wasn't updated in ages, like some of the ancient games from my childhood. Fun stuff.
Then the push to SaaS model came and it all started going to shit.
Re: (Score:1)
Well, yes. But technological debt piles up if you never fix it and at some point you cannot even fix simple things anymore. I think MS has reached that point at least partially and it does not look to me like they are going to improve.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you feel the need to fix things that just work?
Nope. (Score:2)
The world is too poor to afford Apple products and too lazy or frightened to learn Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
And so some 2nd rated crap with (by now) strong tendencies towards 3rd rated becomes market leader. The problem is the pressure from attacks, malware and new technology is raising and I think MS is not prepared.
meh (Score:2)
A sad attempt (Score:1)
A sad attempt at trying to improve functionality. People want computers as a tool. We don't want to rent it from you, we don't want you spying on us, watching what we do, seeing if there's some way you can turn it in to profit for yourself.
If you make a good tool, you will be profitable. If you want to just control and squeeze people, you're only going to get the stupid people to go along with that.
Re: (Score:1)
If you want to just control and squeeze people, you're only going to get the stupid people to go along with that.
And that's how MS, Google, Apple, Failbook and all the usual suspects came to power.
Allow me to ask the usual MS feature question (Score:2)
Can you turn it off and if, how?
Re: (Score:2)
The easiest way: don't use a pen stylus with your Windows machine if it supports one. If the drivers for the stylus never get installed, then the handwriting crap never turns on.
Re: (Score:2)
My work laptop has touch but no stylus, and it has the handwriting installed... I suppose they could have done that manually though
Re: (Score:1)
Format hard drive, install Linux, feature now turned off ... win.
Re: (Score:2)
Finally a windows tip that works.
for slow typers? (Score:1)
I can type much faster than I can write, only thing worse than writing is speaking to a computer.
Ahh Windows for Pen Computing reloaded (Score:2)
One would think that they could do that for decades now, particularly since Microsoft has the unique advantage of having the GUI-toolkit be an integral part of their operating systems.
Title. (Score:2)
Of course it does (Score:1)