Using Word-Shapes

randy · Joined: Dec 19, 2005 Messages: 7 Location: USA Offline

Using Word-Shapes is the key to benefiting from Ring-Writer; they are very convenient for quick writing.

They can also be fun to share with others who come to recognize them as a kind of short-hand. Or, could we even consider them as an alterative symbol system for writing a language? Let's discuss!

Tim · Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Messages: 5 Location: UK Offline

Here are a few Ring-Writing tips:

Take a look at the “Top-100” shapes illustrated in the White Paper. It’s worth at least learning all the two-sector words (especially those that give 3-letter words, like [wxyz][abc] for “was”), and perhaps a few of the more common, or easiest to remember, three-sector shapes.

Look also at how loops are used to make shapes easier to execute (as well as more elegant). Study the strokes for some 2-letter combinations that often occur in English, like “re”, “pr”, “or”, “ti”, “an”, and so on (or other combinations in your own language, once we have provided the dictionary). If you pay attention to these combinations, you will tend to draw the corresponding sub-stroke as a single element in building up a larger word. You will soon progress to 3-letter “chunks” like “fro”, “whe”, “tha” and so on.

When you traverse the central area (for “ar” say) try to think ahead to how you will continue the shape – perhaps by exiting to the outside of the ring in order to re-enter sector [pqrs], or by making a cusp in the sector in order to re-traverse the centre, or by beginning a loop into an adjoining sector.

Tim

Tim · Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Messages: 5 Location: UK Offline

Ring-Writer uses an extremely simple, but effective, gesture recognition system. Our aim has been to provide a convenient way for entering punctuation and special symbols without having to call up a virtual keyboard or character recognizer. The editing gestures allow you to handle text in a more direct and intuitive way than with the mouse, and the action gestures, combined with Ring-Writer commands, replace pull-down menus.

The current gesture definitions have been tested extensively in-house, and work well for us. However, there may be some shapes that some people find difficult to do. Please tell us if you have problems with any of the gestures, specifying which gesture you were trying to make, and whether the gesture simply did not work, or whether it was incorrectly taken for another gesture, and if so, which one.

Here are some general tips which will help you get close to 100% recognition:

1) Make the shapes as large as you can, while of course avoiding the sector ring.
2) Make curves as rounded as possible, and angles as sharp, or “pointed”, as possible – avoid “open” angles (for instance in “Add Word”, or the Command gesture), since these are too easily seen as curves.
3) Use slightly acute angles, rather than right-angles, in the Return gesture, “L” for Letter Mode, and the square-bracket symbols.
4) You don’t have to draw the shapes in the various double-gestures quickly: what counts is the time delay between the end of the first gesture, and the pen-down on the second gesture.

Tim