Overview of handwriting recognition applications

One of the best things about the Pocket PC is that it has natural handwriting recognition. You don't have to learn a set of complex squiggles on a small box that represent letters: the Pocket PC just lets you use your normal handwriting all over the screen too giving you maximum freedom to use a PocketPC as a memoblock. This requires little attention (as a sharp contrast with a keyboard which does require a lot of attention).

Microsoft Transcriber

Transcriber is a freeware application that comes with the operating system, there is a download of transcriber as well. Transcriber is a stripped down version of Calligrapher 5.3 (which basically has evolved from a single celled organism to a hyperintelligent organism during this period of time).

The Pros of Trancriber:

• Free application
• Included in ROM, so it does not require any extra memory

The Cons of Transcriber:

• Average recognition of English language
• Bad recognition of foreign languages

Calligrapher

Paragraph's Calligrapher is one of the best handwriting recognition applications, it costs about $39,95. It allows you to write everywhere, has a option to use gestures for many commands as well.

There are optional languagepackes (Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish) available that cost $14,95 a piece. These languagepacks greatly improve the recognition of the language.

The Pros of Calligrapher:

• Good handwriting recognition, both in print and cursive handwriting
• Contains a dictionary for correction with the possibility to add own words
• Optional recognition engine support for many languages
• Possibility to use gestures for inserting text or commands

PenReader

PenReader is a commercial application ($29,95). It supports many foreign languages (Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian)

The Pros of PenReader:

• Good recognition ratio
• Has a lot of macro's built in

The Cons of PenReader:

• Only recognizes print, and not cursive, handwriting
• No easy way of correcting errors

Zi Decuma

Zi Decuma is a commercial product ($29,95) and recognizes 100% naturally shaped letters in upper and lower cases, numbers, symbols/punctuation and characters. There is no need to adjust to a particular writing style, learn a special alphabet, or manually switch between character sets. Besides English it supports Chinese and Japanese language as well

The Pros of Decuma:

• Fast and accurate text entry
• Ability to modify (train) specific letters
• Good recognition level
• Ability to use macro's
• Ability to make edits in the text on the fly

The Cons of Decuma:

• Only 10 shortcut slots available
• No predictive text capabilities
• Can't write anywhere on the screen
• Short input line