ShapeWriter (previously known as Shorthand-Aided Rapid Keyboarding (SHARK)) was a keyboard text input method for tablet, handheld PCs, and mobile phones invented by Shumin Zhai and

Per Ola Kristensson Per is a Latin preposition which means "through" or "for each", as in per capita. Per or PER may also refer to: Places * IOC country code for Peru * Pér, a village in Hungary * Chapman code for Perthshire, historic county in Scotland Mat ...

IBM Almaden Research Center IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research org ...

and the Department of Computer and Information Science at

Linköping University Linköping University (, LiU) is a public research university based in Linköping, Sweden. Originally established in 1969, it was granted full university status in 1975 and is one of Sweden's largest academic institutions. The university has fo ...

. Using ShapeWriter text entry software, a user draws words on a graphical keyboard using a pen. Instead of tapping the keys, the user draws a pen gesture that connects all the letters in the desired word. After some usage the user learns the movement pattern for the commonly used words and can write them faster than is possible on a traditional

virtual keyboard A virtual keyboard is a software component that allows the input of characters without the need for physical keys. The interaction with the virtual keyboard happens mostly via a touchscreen interface, but can also take place in a different form ...

. The first system described by Shumin Zhai and Per Ola Kristensson (2003) was only a prototype system that could recognize about 100 pen gestures for the top 100 words used in the English language. It used a

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 ...

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

that relied on

dynamic programming Dynamic programming is both a mathematical optimization method and a computer programming method. The method was developed by Richard Bellman in the 1950s and has found applications in numerous fields, from aerospace engineering to economics. I ...

to recognize the word patterns drawn from a lexicon. The next version described by Per Ola Kristensson and Shumin Zhai (2004) has a fundamentally different recognition engine that can recognize 50,000 - 60,000 words with low latency. This system introduced the notion that every word in a large lexicon should be possible to write by tracing the letters. It is this system that was the basis for the software release on IBM alphaWorks that is generally associated with the term "ShapeWriter". ShapeWriter was acquired by

Nuance Communications Nuance Communications, Inc. is an American multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, that markets speech recognition and artificial intelligence software. Nuance merged with its compe ...

, and taken off the market in 2010; its technology presumably incorporated as part of Nuance's FlexT9 app in 2011.

iPhone

ShapeWriter was made available for the iPhone approximately in 2008 and was revised several times (including ShapeWriter Lite and ShapeWriter Pro or Plus) before being pulled due to its sale to

(see following entry). Those who purchased the iPhone version continued to use it and it also functioned on iPads v. 1 and 2 until 2013. As of 2013 it no longer functions on iOS devices and is no longer available in Apple's App Store.

Android

ShapeWriter software was made available as a free application for

Android (operating system) Android is a mobile operating system based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open-source software, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android is developed by a consortium of d ...

smartphones through the Android Market. As a touchscreen keyboard replacement, it had over 50,000 users on Android worldwide. It was available only for Android OS versions 1.6 or higher. ShapeWriter for Android was available in 7 European languages including English, Spanish, and German. There was also a Beta release for Android 1.5 phones including the

HTC Hero HTC Hero (marketed as T-Mobile G2 Touch by T-Mobile in the UK, Austria, Germany, Croatia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Hungary; and as Era G2 Touch in Poland) is the third phone manufactured by HTC running the Android platform, announced on Ju ...

and

Droid Eris HTC Hero (marketed as T-Mobile G2 Touch by T-Mobile in the UK, Austria, Germany, Croatia, the Netherlands, Slovakia, and Hungary; and as Era G2 Touch in Poland) is the third phone manufactured by HTC running the Android platform, announced on J ...

. ShapeWriter, Inc. was purchased by

and the ShapeWriter software was removed from the Android Market indefinitely on June 20, 2010.

References

*Zhai, S. and Kristensson, P.O. (2003)
Shorthand Writing on Stylus Keyboard
Proc. CHI 2003, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. *Kristensson, P.O. and Zhai, S. (2004)
SHARK²: A Large Vocabulary Shorthand Writing System for Pen-Based Computers
Proc. UIST 2004, ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. *Zhai, S. and Kristensson, P.O. (2006)
Introduction to Shape Writing
IBM Research Report RJ10393, November 1, 2006.

Notes

External links

* {{official website, http://www.shapewriter.com/
An Alternative Text Input Method, 27th Internationalization and Unicode Conference, Berlin 2005

Download a version of ShapeWriter for tablet PC

United States Patent 7,250,938 System and method for improved user input on personal computing devices

Mobile technology Pointing-device text input Android (operating system) software Android virtual keyboards Virtual keyboards Computer-related introductions in 2003