Handwriting Input Line Thickness

[Shun]

In beta 35, the HWR line thickness was suddenly reduced, only to grow back a bit after I took a screenshot. I would favor a somewhat thicker line, but anything's fine.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks - we did reduce the thickness because we decided the old thickness was sub-optimal for drawing complex characters, but it should be sticking to the one size.

 

[Shun]

Have you considered adding a free and simple line smoothing algorithm (just for display) such as this? Right now, the input looks a little jagged.

 

[mikelove]

We've experimented with line smoothing algorithms and the big problem is that they tend to have to work after the fact, i.e., it corrects the line you've already drawn, which I at least find kind of disconcerting.

If we ever add a feature that involves drawing images to save permanently - i.e. a visual notes feature or some such - we'd probably use Apple's PencilKit or whatever Android equivalent we can dig up for that, which will give you adjustable line thicknesses and smoothing and different brush types and different colors and all the rest, but right now the only two places we use drawing input are both painfully ephemeral and I'd rather have it feel simple/live/instant than have the results look pretty

 

[Shun]

Thanks for the explanation, that makes a lot of sense to me. Or would it perhaps be possible to increase the refresh rate at which input points are registered further? It feels more like 30 frames per second to me than 60.

 

[mikelove]

In theory it should be 60fps already, but we can take a look and see if it might sometimes be getting hung up on something.

 

[Shun]

Oh, if so, that would probably help a lot
already.

 

[daal]

What about a line that imitates a brush. I've seen that in some drawing apps and it would be lovely when drawing characters...

 

[mikelove]

We had that option in earlier betas, we got rid of it as part of our larger project of slimming down the number of options we offer but can consider bringing it back based on demand.

 

[daal]

I'd pay for it if it worked well...

 

[mikelove]

It's not hard to do tech-wise, PencilKit is built into iOS, it's just that 4.0 is the first chance in forever we've had to trim back the number of settings we support and we really want to be very deliberate about adding new ones.

 

[Shun]

Report from Beta 36: The lines look a good bit smoother now, also a little thicker. I like both. I wrote this character quite quickly:

 

[mikelove]

Great! Hopefully we can get this to a default that almost everyone will be happy with