How to draw the letter o?

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dymtang

秀才
Hi Experts out there,

I have "Alpha (lower right)" and "Recognize numbers" both turned on, but am unable to draw the letter "o". the handwriting recognition software keeps inputting "0" instead. I tried different ways of drawing "o" to no avail. If "Recognize numbers" is off, it works of course. Any help appreciated.

Thanks

DT
 
alanmd

alanmd

探花
For me '0' (zero) is always the first choice and 'o' is second. You have to tap on the 'o' to choose the letter rather than the number. Similarly a vertical stroke always gives '1' as the first choice, and you have to tap for 'l' or 'i'.

My guess is the handwriting recognition just worries about the 'shape' of the letter, not its' size, so there is no way to distinguish between a big 0 and little o - perhaps as a subtle optimisation. That could be requested as a feature, but I suspect the current behaviour might be preferred to many people as the current behaviour is more consistent.
 
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Vzzzbx

进士
The HWR definitely doesn't worry about the size of a letter. This is especially noticeable on the ipad interface — you can write any character in any part of the input box, as small as you like, and it'll recognise it instantly.
 
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dymtang

秀才
Thanks for the replies. For me, I'm able to draw all the letters and numbers successfully on the iphone except the letter o. For the letter l, I draw an uppercase L, and for the number 1, I draw a slash from upper right to lower left. A back slash from upper left to lower right will give me an x. A dash will give me an i. So if the software can distinguish o and 0, maybe one from a clockwise circle and the other a counter-clockwise circle, that would be great.

dt
 
alanmd

alanmd

探花
dymtang said:
For me, I'm able to draw all the letters and numbers successfully on the iphone except the letter o.
Click to expand...

But you can select it from the displayed choices at the bottom can't you? The problem for you is that 'o' not the default choice, so it takes you an extra click to draw an 'o'. I am not sure that the handwriting recognition even attempts to recognise all letters unambiguously in a single stroke; the fact that most characters that you use can be determined with one stroke might be just luck.
 
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dymtang

秀才
Well there is a "Clear after 1 stroke" option that, if enabled, will recognize all the letters and digits with one stroke, so I don't need to put in an extra tap to make a selection. All, that is, except the letter "o". That's the reason I posted the message to see if others have figured out a way to distinguish letter o from digit 0. I guess since 0 is not used to mark tones, it's not used that often.
 
alanmd

alanmd

探花
Perhaps just fixing the default order as you suggest (putting 'o' before zero) would be the best thing; as you say you don't very often need to type a zero in a dictionary.

I suspect most people use the on-screen keyboard for both pinyin and English; iOS doesn't offer English handwriting recognition so using the soft keyboard feels quite natural. For me the handwriting recognition is only ever used for hanzi characters. I am so used to clicking on one of the selections when I am half-way through a character or I write one incorrectly that it seems quite natural to click on the suggested characters when using handwriting.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I'm not aware of any special stroke that you can use to differentiate one from another, but certainly a fix like always putting 'o' before '0' would be doable - I'll make a note to investigate that for the next update. Detecting clockwise versus counterclockwise might also work, the recognition engine wouldn't notice but we could check the original strokes and decide whether to prioritize o or O based on that.
 
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Vzzzbx

进士
Just a thought: would it be worth detecting a slashed 0 as a zero? It would work very well for English speakers, but I don't know how it would affect speakers of Scandinavian languages that use the Ø/ø letter.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Vzzzbx said:
Just a thought: would it be worth detecting a slashed 0 as a zero? It would work very well for English speakers, but I don't know how it would affect speakers of Scandinavian languages that use the Ø/ø letter.
Click to expand...

The main question there is how often people are likely to enter '0' - the primary usage scenario for alphanumeric input in HWR is entering little bits of Pinyin, which, as dymtang already mentioned, never uses '0' anyway. We're not even trying to support non-Latin characters, so someone who wanted to enter a Scandinavian Ø would need to switch to the iOS keyboard for that.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
dymtang said:
In addition to making o (not 0) the default, can the space character be added as well, as part of HWR?
Click to expand...

I don't see why not, as a - across the alpha area. Is this for full-text searches?
 
radioman

radioman

状元
Not to hijack this discussion... but without running around and doing proper research, I believe you can input alpha text, but I thought that what was missing was the ability to, like Palm Graphiti, add a space by a swiping motion across the writing area. For me, it was for full text searching.

I would want this ability.
 
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