Is there a missing feature in the Tablet PC Input Panel?

I've been reading more and more banter about "ink vs. keyboard" which has me contemplating the whole debate. There's a time and place for both to be sure, and I'm trying to step back to see it from a non-Tablet PC user's point of view. Clearly, I'm accustomed to inking since my primary mobile device is a slate form factor. Yes, I use a Bluetooth keyboard when I feel the need, but primarily, I use the TIP, or Tablet PC Input Panel, for my input. There are exceptions such as e-mail or OneNote notes, because I can just ink in my own handwriting; there's no need to translate to text, something valuable that folks are overlooking, but that's another post for another day.

So as I attempted to take a fresh look at the two sides in this conversation, I realized there's a potential opportunity that would go a long way to help bring the two closer. I got the idea as I was thinking about my T-Mobile Dash keyboard, in fact. I still believe that a Windows Mobile keyboard would make for an excellent Bluetooth companion keyboard to a slate Tablet PC or UMPC, but that's not the feature I was thinking about. Aside from the already familiar QWERTY layout on Windows Mobile keyboards, what it is that makes them efficient and useful?

It's the auto-complete feature and I think there's the potential opportunity to leverage that with the Tablet PC Input Panel. Before we go any further with the keyboard scenario, I should mention that there is an "auto-complete" feature in the TIP today, but let me describe it because what I'm suggesting is actually different.

Today, if you click the Options menu in the TIP, you'll see an "AutoComplete" check-box. I have it checked and here's what it does, per the actual description: "Suggest matches in Input Panel when possible, such as email addresses, URLs, file names and other previous entries." It definitely comes in handy, especially with URLs and addresses; once you begin to type a URL for example, if the TIP recognizes it from a prior entry, it will suggest the full prior URL. You simply tap it and go, which is great.

That's far different from the text prediction that we see in Windows Mobile and that auto-complete approach saves a ton of keystrokes. As you type on a WinMo keypad, you'll see various suggestions for what the word is going to be: if the correct word is suggested, you just tap the Space bar to select the word and add a space after it. Zoom, you're off to the next word and you don't have type every letter of every word. It's a very efficient text entry add-on that saves time. Here's an example, literally:

In the above picture, I only had to type the first three letters of the word "example" and now Windows Mobile has suggested the word in the bottom of the screen. I tap the Spacebar and the full word is completed along with the trailing space....I'm moving on.

There's a bit of contextual processing going on here as well, which certainly helps. I understand that this could be a difficult approach with handwriting recognition; after all, Windows has to determine and translate your handwriting before it could possibly suggest the rest of the word. I think that advances in hardware, could diminish that problem over time, but for now I can see that being a challenge. How about the on-screen keyboard in the TIP or even the character pad where you're only writing or choosing one letter at a time? Perhaps the suggested words could appear just above or just below the TIP so that you can quickly tap the one you want and then move on.

As it stands now, this type of display system appears when you're highlighting and correcting items with the tip. If I had inked the phrase "Here's another example" in the TIP for Notepad and then highlighted the word  'another' in Notepad, the TIP assumes I want to correct or change the word, so it suggests words from the built-in dictionary right below the TIP.

Maybe this isn't practical for the Writing Pad on the tip, but it could be very useful for the on-screen keyboard. Is it a challenge to add this as a feature? Well, I'm no programmer, but I suspect that it would be a challenge. I am a Tablet PC user, however and I think this type of feature could be a boon to folks that feel they must have a keyboard on their PC. Some people always will feel that way, and I'm not begrudging them that right, nor am I judging their personal preference. I'm simply looking for a way to reduce the gap between the Ink and the Keyboard sides. Thoughts?

Comments

[G. Scott]

Using both a Treo and an OQO model 2, I would very much like some of the auto-complete and 'smart' text entry features to be implemented on UMPCs as well.

[James]

Does autocomplete work with any version of Vista? I have Business and I've never seen this function at work. I've always had autocomplete on. Then again TIP correction only works 60% of the time for me so I learned to not expect the other features to work 100% of the time.

[Sumocat]

That's an on-the-money observation, Kev. They have this feature in Windows Mobile, so it makes little sense to not have it in the TIP. It wouldn't count on it working (or at least working well) in the writing pad since that detects context and words, not just characters, but I see no reason why it couldn't be done for the character pad and keyboard. Actually, now that you bring up the topic, it is a bit odd that the writing pad has word recognition, while the other two don't.

[lsbeller]

Parallel to this topic, but actually why I rarely use the on screen keyboard is that I have really enjoyed the implementation of ritePen and the context menu that pops up when it recognizes your "Write Anywhere" ink: a box pops up with what it thinks you have written in bold at the top. Underneath are several other possibilities of what you may have written and it just takes a tap to select any of them and have that automatically replaced in the inputed text. Very nice.

Steve

[jwright]

The biggest missing feature with the TIP is that it shouldn't be there at all. Entering input using ink should be more integrated into the operating system and much less of an after thought. There are many ways to do this and I have thought about this in the past but I will not mention those here (hmmm....I smell blog post).

The TIP to me seems to clumsy to me. First, you have to find it on the screen and then either click on it or hover your pen on it. Then you have to wait for the panel to parse and recognize your text. If there are any errors, you have to fix them, then you get to place them within the input area. Most of the time, you have to do this in multiple steps because the text usually won't fit nicely into the TIP panel. This is really clumsy, prone to error, and frusterating at times. I can't imagine how tiresome this would be to a new user (I don't remember that far back and I was too niave then).

I do agree that Microsoft has improved the TIP a lot within Vista (especially with the handwriting recognition) but it is still an afterthought. It can be better and should be as smooth and a lot less stressfull, such as inking in OneNote (and no, I feel ritePen is not the answer either).

[Bill Pytlovany]

I am very impressed with TIP. It's much easier than I ever expected but one problem. Is there anyway to delete a word?
For some reason when I write "You", my Tablet PC always thinks I'm saying "Yin". How popular is Yin? Anyone else have this problem or is it just my writting style.

Bill

[fil]

Nokia phones have autocomplete is it's garbage because it's inaccurate and cannot account when I'm writing in English or using dictation.

[Ben]

I take it you refer to TIP in Vista - I'm using XP, don't find the autocomplete.

I agree, however, have resorted to a combination of 3 soft keyboards, macros, TIP, Dragon NS, and sometimes Dasher to do what I need.

Ben in CA

[devwild]

It has always bugged me that the TIP in XP (and from what I'm reading here, Vista as well) lacks the full functionality of that in windows mobile (seriously, why?). I've loved two things about the pocketPC soft keyboard for years - 1) dictionary completion, as mentioned here, and 2) the ability to remove shift, backspace, enter and space from the keyboard and use simple gestures anywhere on the panel - I actually find it speeds up my input because I have to drift back and forth across the keyboard much less, and don't have to hit the extra button for shift. I find it so natural that it drives me nuts when it doesn't work on our office XP tablet.