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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only person here with handwritting so bad that the automated recognition just completely and utterly fails?

I got the latest iPad Pro with the Pencil 2 some time ago - and as much as my friends rave about the "very good and totally great" handwriting recognition in text fields, it's just totally bust for me. I can't write a single word and have it recognized correctly on first try. It takes me 10x as long to scrible as it does to just poke at keys on a virtual keyboard with the pencil.

And yes, I can read my own handwriting. Just the computer apparently can't.

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I have the worst handwriting I know of. It’s so bad that I can’t do whiteboard interviews, I specifically request a laptop with a notepad.

I tried getting into the iPad Pro + pencil workflow but it didn’t work for me initially. Even I couldn’t decipher what I’d written because the smooth surface made my handwriting worse. I didn’t think that was possible.

What changed it for me was adding a textured screen protector and Apple releasing Scribble in iOS 14. My handwriting can’t be deciphered by humans but apparently ML can manage it! The workflow of annotating PDFs and kindle books with the pencil very enjoyable after these two changes. It subjectively feels more productive because I’m not interrupting my thoughts by bringing up the keyboard and searching for keys with one finger.

I don't know if there's any way to use Palm Pilot ('Graffiti') style alphabets on modern devices. I guess every year handwriting recognition gets better, fewer and fewer people are outliers, and it doesn't matter, but it has always appealed to me as a way to increase accuracy, finding an accommodation between man and machine.

On a side note, I've made my handwriting more readable on the past year, and it was a fairly small effort. Changing a few letter forms, but mostly just slowing down and being conscious about it. Little things like slanting the crosses on 'f' and 't' so they're distinct rather than running together.

My handwriting is so bad. I’m 35 years old. And I try so hard. I slow down and hold the pencil/pen/stylus differently. I try making characters in different ways. And no matter what I do my handwriting goes from terrible to childlike and back. It’s embarrassing honestly.

Nothing wrong with child-like.

This is where something like Scribble would be useful if it could let you write and draw in your own handwriting, and then fix things up along the way to look highly professional. E.g. if you draw a square quickly and title it Square, you’d end up with straight lines and the word Square neatly drawn on top of it. Even better if could be stylized with different drawing flavors.

While Scribble can do a little or it by correcting shapes if you are careful enough as you draw, it isn’t able to “autocorrect” hand drawn titles by replacing with rendered text.

Try Nebo app [0], it is so far the best note taking app for iPad. Also, it is the second to last demo in the article, and that is the target I am aiming for.

[0]: https://www.nebo.app

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