Re: Re: scribble update

   From: Carl Worth <cworth_at_east.isi.edu>
   Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 11:57:25 -0400 (EDT)

> From kerr_at_pa.dec.com Wed, 23 Aug 2000 13:20:34 -0700
> Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 13:20:34 -0700
> From: Deborah Wallach kerr_at_pa.dec.com
> Subject: [Handhelds] scribble update
>
> I checked in a new version of xscribble and updates to the classifier
> files to handhelds.org.
>
> The changes I made enabled: tab, capslock, '"', '\', '{', '}', '[', ']'.
> - tab is invoked by drawing the same symbol as is used for the letter 'f',
> but in punctuation mode, and starting from the bottom left instead of the
> top right.

   A thousand thanks Debby! I can't live without TAB-completion when
   using a full-size keyboard, and even more so when using something like
   xscribble. (Incidentally, for the iPAQ folk, I haven't seen this new
   version in the distribution yet...)

You can always use 'ctrl' 'i' in an emergency. :-)

   Does anyone have a utility for editing/generating these classifier
   files? As is obvious from the perl source mentioned above, the stroke
   information is simply a list of X Y pairs. But what is all the
   floating point data in the file before the list of X Y stroke data?
   How did you generate more strokes, Debby?

Actually, all I did was notice that certain strokes were already being
recognized by the recognizer, but ignored by xscribble. I put mappings for
them into the file, and voila. There are still two unmapped symbols in the
digits & letters classifiers files that can be used (currently they map to
'V' and 'W'; you can see exactly which strokes will generate those from the
perl script). After that, somebody has to figure out how to edit/generate
new files.

   My next immediate need from xscribble is a way to generate Escape, (vi
   is pretty useless otherwise).

You could use either the 'V' or 'W' gesture for that... It should be a
simple change to the Recognize function of Scribble.c.

   is pretty useless otherwise). I'd also like to make xscribble notice
   if a modifier key was pressed while the stroke was entered and then
   pass the appropriately modified key event on. (My idea is to map a
   couple of the buttons on the iPAQ to CTRL and META and use them with a
   single xscribble stroke rather than a two-stroke method where the
   first stroke specifies the modifier. Modifiers seem like one of the
   most useful mappings for buttons as applications will be able to
   distinguish from plain mouse events and modified mouse events. This
   can alleviate the problem of porting program that expect several mouse
   buttons to work with a "1-button" stylus.)

I just did this for the Itsy (but not for our X version, just for the
console mode). In addition to the obvious benefits of ctrl/meta/shift
available on buttons, the cursor keys can be used with ctrl/meta/shift as
well to provide emacs/tcsh style motion (e.g. right cursor moves right one
char, right cursor + shift moves right one word, and right cursor plus ctrl
moves to end of line), which makes editing a file when away from a keyboard
a little simpler. If the iPAQ ever supports multiple button presses, this
scheme could be useful on it as well.

                        -Debby
Received on Tue Sep 05 2000 - 10:48:08 EDT