"Graffiti 2 Powered by Jot" was introduced in 2003 as a revised version of the original

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provi ...

handwriting system

Graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

. In January 2003, PalmSource announced the change explaining that Graffiti 2 was based on ''Jot'' by Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC) and would replace the original version of Graffiti. Graffiti 2 made its debut in Palm OS 4.1.2 for

Motorola DragonBall Motorola/Freescale Semiconductor's DragonBall, or MC68328, is a microcontroller design based on the famous 68000 core, but implemented as an all-in-one low-power system for handheld computer use. It is supported by μClinux. It was designed by Mot ...

-based handhelds and in Palm OS Garnet 5.2 for ARM-based ones.

History

The primary reason for the change was the fact that in April 1997

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and electronic document, digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (ha ...

had sued PalmSource, Inc. over its use of Graffiti. After a legal fight lasting a number of years, and despite the dismissal of the case by a federal judge, Xerox won a reversal late in 2001 in the

U.S. Court of Appeals The United States courts of appeals are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal judiciary. The courts of appeals are divided into 11 numbered circuits that cover geographic areas of the United States and hear appeals fr ...

. As part of their press for the new

handwriting recognition Handwriting recognition (HWR), also known as handwritten text recognition (HTR), is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other dev ...

system, PalmSource said that Jot and Graffiti 2 more closely followed the standard ways of drawing letters and numbers than the original Graffiti did; they also said that lowering the learning curve would attract more new users to the platform. The change, on the other hand, alienated many long-time Palm users who were already happy with the previous version of Graffiti which they claimed was much easier to use (though perhaps not to learn). A prominent issue cited by detractors is the number of

stylus A stylus (plural styli or styluses) is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision w ...

strokes required to draw a character. The original Graffiti recognition software required only a single stylus stroke for each alphanumeric character. Graffiti 2, however, required two strokes to draw some commonly used characters. This was perceived as extra work because the default settings for "i" and "t", the fifth and second most frequently-used letters in English, required two strokes. Preferences settings allowed switching variants for letters P, T, Y and $, but none of them could be switched back to single stroke.

References

{{reflist Pointing-device text input Computing input devices Personal digital assistant software User interface techniques Palm OS