Palm Source to go with Jot - Graffiti dropped!

[mochant]

This story showed up at Beta News this morning:

http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=1042513864

Apparently, Palm will drop Graffiti in favor of Jot for handwriting recognition in "current and future" versions of Palm OS. Jot has been used in Pocket PC devices and is a popular alternative to the built-in Graffiti handwriting recognition engine for many Palm OS users.

The technology, according to the story, will be branded Graffiti 2.

[aaronchow]

We should all thank Xerox and Judge Michael Telesca for this, at least we won't feel any unfamiliar when we migrate to PPC.

[SamuraiCatJB]

Interesting.... so will this start with NZ?

[wnm]

The article references the CIC website to get Jot, but it looks like they're charging for it. PalmGear lists it at $39.00, which is pretty pricey. I hope it's a free OS upgrade for us OS 4.1 users.

[Derango]

I tried out Jot yesterday. It was on my Clie for 5 minutes. It was just too weird for me, not to mention I was writing normalyl and it still didn't recognize my letters...I guess this is good for newbie palm users, but I hope standard graffiti is still an option for the oldtimer palm users :)

[exiii]

Originally posted by aaronchow
We should all thank Xerox and Judge Michael Telesca for this, at least we won't feel any unfamiliar when we migrate to PPC. No, thank the moron (now at handspring) who knew about the unistroke patent and built a slightly modified version into his new toy anyway.

[Visigoth]

Did Xerox even offer to license it to Palm? I would think that there could have been some deal arranged where it would not have caused a big increase in prices. Also could Sony go and license it themselves and continue to include Graffiti regardless of what is in the "official" PalmOS?

I think it is a bad move eitherway. When deciding to upgrade from my Visor I did look at some of the PPC handhelds. One of the big things that I did not like was the handwriting input. That once actually the biggest issue that made me stay with PalmOS. Graffiti may take a bit to learn, but it is not very complicated and most of them are quite intuitive.

Well, I guess even if they do get rid of Graffiti I imagine someone will write a app to simulate it.

[DoctorDED]

Originally posted by Visigoth

Well, I guess even if they do get rid of Graffiti I imagine someone will write a app to simulate it.

They can't get rid of it! Only you can get rid of it. Like when this new patch comes out (someday), it will be a flash update, so you have the choice not to update to the newest version. Or, if you in to programming, you can download you flash rom to your PC, etrack the graffiti program and database files, then replace them in the new Palm OS 4.1.2(or whatever), then flash it. Always test in an emulator before flashing an OS to Palm / Sony.

[johnfox]

What are they thinking?

[tsuribito]

As long as they include an option to use Grafitti or something equal, I don't see a Problem.
It is nice to have an alternative and get new features for free.

[Serotta]

Guys, get a grip. This news has nothing to do with current Clies. I doubt that this will ever be offered as part of OS 4.x, and maybe not even 5.x. The problem, as exiii succinctly stated, is that Palm should have never tried to use Graffiti without licensing it from Xerox. This is the biggest reason that all the new HandSpring stuff has keyboards instead of Graffiti. so yes, if you want Jot on your existing Palm OS PDA you'll have to buy it. And yes, at some point, Palm OS will no longer include Graffiti, but will include some form of Jot. But this has no impact whatsoever on PDA's produced to this point. What it could mean is some kind of monetary judgement against PalmSource.

[johnfox]

Thanks for clearing that up!

[rollcage]

You'd think that Xerox would have been able to come up with some deal for Palm to be able to licence it cheaply, considering the amount of palm OS devices sold, and also considering that Xerox as a company is basically down the drain laying off thousands in Rochester NY and stocks at rock bottom!

[leerm8680]

Anyone notice it took since 1996 for this graffitti/xerox/pattent issue to show up? Get the "addiction" going then press for the big bucks.

[Serotta]

Originally posted by leerm8680
Anyone notice it took since 1996 for this graffitti/xerox/pattent issue to show up? Get the "addiction" going then press for the big bucks.

Original lawsuit dates to 1997. The civil courts move very slowly at times. :rolleyes:

[leerm8680]

Evolution moves faster than that. If the lawsuit dated back to '97 then why didn't palm move to a different "handwriting" platform?

[Malainie]

Originally posted by Serotta
Guys, get a grip. This news has nothing to do with current Clies. I doubt that this will ever be offered as part of OS 4.x, and maybe not even 5.x.

I just did a Graffiti 2 search at palmsource.com and found this (http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/palmos50/os52overview.html) posted for their developers:

"Palm OS 5.2 is mainly a bug fix release. In addition, it contains a small set of new features and modifications, most notably a new handwriting recognition engine called Graffiti 2. The Graffiti 2 engine is based on the well-known Jot product from Communications Intelligence Corporation (CIC). Furthermore, as part of this release to licensees, we have defined a platform collapsible input area API for all licensees to use.

Alongside this release is a minor update to the 68K OS, Palm OS 4.1.2. Palm OS 4.1.2 is Palm OS 4.1 with the addition of the Graffiti 2 handwriting recognition engine."

[PhantomClie]

PPC 2002 gives you the option to use a Palm based graffitti......