Check my web site at for latest information. Actually, the first thing one notices is what is missing, namely gestures. Those special squiggles that performed delete, cut, copy, paste, edit, and other operations are absent from the new Pen Services 2.
In their place is a combination of an odd looking horizontal arrow button that appears underneath the cursor, and the redefined use of the circle-around-letter feature.
The under-arrow, as I call it, can be dragged to select a range of text, or clicked to bring up a menu of options including cut, copy, paste, and inserting spaces and tabs. For example, where before a single sideways L gesture could add a space, with the under-arrow it is now necessary to click it, then click insert, and then click on space.
Unfortunately, it only appears in Win95 programs-older 16 bit apps do not show the under-arrow in their dialog boxes. Microsoft says they have replaced the old squiggle gestures with the circle around a letter feature which they now call gestures-see related web document.
For example, the circle-S gesture will now insert a space. But the user-configurable feature that was in Windows for Pen where a sequence of keys could be tied to each circle-around-letter gesture has been lost in PS 2. One really neat feature that has been added is the lasso. It is a cousin of the circle-around-letter gesture, only with a dot or period. Except in this case, you draw the circle first, surrounding text or graphics you want to select, then tap in the middle to make the dot.
The result is that everything circled is marked as selected-much easier than dragging the under-arrow. But the accuracy is a bit lacking, and it doesn't work in the "fixed" version of MS Word see below.
Also missing in PS 2. Although the new keyboard has three different styles and different sizes, there are no function keys, nor an escape, home, end, page up, page down, insert, or delete key. Remember the recognition training program that allowed instantaneous correction as well as inspection of each character in the database? Well, that's been redesigned as well. The new training program asks the user to write in a preset sequence of words, much like a first grade writing test, which it uses to invisibly adjust the database.
There is no option to train an individual character, nor to review the database to find a particularly bad scribble that is causing problems. This new method may actually be considered easier to use by some, but I sorely miss the control the old program had over the recognition database. It is much like the text edit box brought up by the check mark gesture under Windows for Pen, but Microsoft has added a few interesting features here: clicking on a letter brings up a number of possible alternatives to replace it.
And when in keyboard mode, extra buttons under the text show possible words to finish off what is being typed. Since Microsoft removed so many of the really neat features that were in Windows for Pen, the big question is whether PS 2.
The answer is going to be up to each individual user, how they use the pen, and what they need to run. Quick links. I've found a really interesting copy of Windows for Pen Computing, but right now I've got no way to test it.
I would like to know what it is, since Wikipedia has a very very short article. Thanks a lot. Post by strekship » Sun Sep 02, pm It was an early tablet pc operating system. Post by Chicago » Sun Sep 02, pm Well I could figure that out!! I would like to know some of the main features. Did it had any text recognition? Something else than that article on Wikipedia. Tanks a lot, thought! Back in the days of DOS, there were a lot of industries that used a special light pen which you touched to a monitor, to get input.
There are functions to use these light pens even in Qbasic. It must be pretty interesting. Let's see! By now I'm charmed with Windows Chicago Build 73 as my secondary os! In the late s, early pen computer systems generated a lot of excitement and there was a time when it was thought they might eventually replace conventional computers with keyboards. After all, everyone knows how to use a pen and pens are certainly less intimidating than keyboards.
Pen computers, as envisioned in the s, were built around handwriting recognition. In the early s, handwriting recognition was seen as an important future technology. Nobel prize winner Dr. Charles Elbaum started Nestor and developed the NestorWriter handwriting recognizer. Communication Intelligence Corporation created the Handwriter recognition system, and there were many others. In , the pen computing hype was at a peak.
The pen was seen as a challenge to the mouse, and pen computers as a replacement for desktops. Microsoft, seeing slates as a potentially serious competition to Windows computers, announced Pen Extensions for Windows 3. Microsoft made some bold predictions about the advantages and success of pen systems that would take another ten years to even begin to materialize. In , products arrived. GO Corporation released PenPoint. Lexicus released the Longhand handwriting recognition system.
Microsoft released Windows for Pen Computing. Between and , a number of companies introduced hardware to run Windows for Pen Computing or PenPoint. The computer press was first enthusiastic, then very critical when pen computers did not sell. They measured pen computers against desktop PCs with Windows software and most of them found pen tablets difficult to use.
They also criticized handwriting recognition and said it did not work. After that, pen computer companies failed. Momenta closed in Samsung and NCR did not introduce new products. AST stopped all pen projects. By , pen computing was dead in the consumer market. Microsoft made a half-hearted attempt at including "Pen Services" in Windows 95, but slate computers had gone away, at least in consumer markets.
It lived on in vertical and industrial markets. That was, however, not the end of pen computing. Bill Gates had always been a believer in the technology, and you can see slate computers in many of Microsoft's various "computing in the future" presentations over the years. Unfortunately for Apple, the Newton messagePad arrived at just that time, in the Fall of The spin at the time was that while pen computing apparently wasn't for notebooks, it would become a huge success in PDAs, Personal Digital Assistants.
The original Newton was a brilliant product, albeit one with some rather serious flaws. While it included numerous innovations, it heavily relied on handwriting recognition which, at lest in its first iteration, didn't work very well.
Industry pundits and even cartoonists mercilessly pounded the Newton as a result. For a full history of the Newton, read our Newton Notes archive and the story of its eventual demise. When Windows 95 came out in the Fall of , a much improved version 2. Also, Microsoft didn't deliver as much as it had promised, leaving many pen computing developers frustrated. As a result, some vendors of pen computers turned to Communication Intelligence Corporation 's PenX alternative, or provided only rudimentary pen functionality in the form of a digitizer control panel.
The primary reason why Windows was being used in mobile pen system despite the absence of many mobile features is the seamless integration into a company's corporate IT structure. There is no need for retraining of users or programmers. Almost all those Webpads were derivatives of the groundbreaking Zenith CruisePad circa that met an untimely death when Zenith Data Systems was sold to Packard Bell sigh! National Semi was the primary champion of the Webpad effort for two or three years, but that changed when Microsoft was getting back into the picture with the Tablet PC.
Webpads, as originally conceived, may continue in some form as thin clients, and also as Windows CE. Smart Displays, initially codenamed "Project Mira," were another short-lived Microsoft tablet initiative. The idea was to create lightweight tablets that would wirelessly communicate with a Windows XP host.
The project seemed ill-conceived and quickly folded. Microsoft invents pen computing -- again Bill Gates' keynote at the Fall Comdex was somewhat amusing to pen historians as Gates held up a webpad, called it "Tablet PC," and acted as if this were some great new technology that Microsoft had just invented.
At the WinHEC conference in early , Microsoft revealed more details of its Tablet PC effort, including a number of hardware and software partners. That conference was followed by an invitation-only NDA conference where Microsoft revealed more technical details to an audience of mostly OEMs and developers. In it, Pen Computing contributing writer Geoff Walker analyzed and commented on every aspect of the project and the technology.
At the time, interest in the proposed Tablet PC platform was heating up as shipment of traditional PCs and even notebooks was slowing down or leveling off. There were informal projections that of 45 million notebooks shipped in , and a full half of those were expected to use the Tablet PC extensions. We figured that even if only one in five of those devices were an actual tablet or slate, that would be almost five million pen slates a year.
Those projections turned out to be overly optimistic. Ever since, Pen Computing has been covering the Tablet PC project very closely, running regular updates. At some point we even a special page insert dedicated entirely to the Tablet PC.
We had hoped it would eventually evolve into a separate Tablet PC Magazine and even approachd Microsoft for sponsorship.
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