As I was browsing through the Productivity category, as has become a customary habit of mine of late, I came across an application called Use Your Handwriting (Gold), which seems to address several different common tablet-based desires, all in one application, and from a refreshingly new angle.
The application itself looks a bit like an old school-issue slate. If you are olde enough to remember when we used chalkboards in class, then imagine glowing coloured chalk.
First, as it sounds, UYH lets you write in freehand, rather than keying in words. But it goes about doing so in a way which addresses the main problem with freehand writing on a tablet (especially without a stylus): the issue of scale. You can either write like a sixth grader, or find an application that lets you pan and zoom so as to write at a reasonable “fingerpainting” size, and ultimately produce a smaller print. As I’ve posted before, I’ve preferred Adobe Ideas for this, since it is free and vector based (a side problem with the pan-and-zoom method is that while zoomed in, everything looks exceedingly ugly with expanded pixels). But a problem with pan-and-zoom-and-write is that it requires an awful lot of fiddling around instead of writing. Every three or four words you have to swipe the canvas over, and because you can’t see the rest of the line, it’s hard to tell if your words are baseline drifting or crooked; it can sometimes be a little fussy getting zoomed in the right amount. Another problem is resting your palm. At least one notepad style application, Punultimate[size=80][1][/size], has taken a stab at ignoring the palm of your hand while you write (and it does work pretty well), but most freeform notepad applications require you to levitate (or wear biker gloves, which admittedly, does significantly increase your quantity of cool points), which quickly becomes tiring.
UYH addresses all three of these major hassles with a single, simple interface device. It provides you with a writing screen, which is a a large area that fills a little less than 1/2 the screen in landscape mode, and 1/4 in portrait mode. To write, you just write with your finger in large letters, using the height of the writing area as the full space you would use on ruled paper. In other words: accommodate for ascenders and descenders. The consistent height and writing position allows you to very easily keep everything lined up on a single baseline. I think the software might even be doing a little to help you out there, as well—as my writing ended up coming out supernaturally aligned.
What happens when you reach the end of the writing area? There are two modes, and four options for the first mode.
- Auto-scroll: this one has three different speed settings and an “off” toggle, which is like pausing the scroller perpetually (pausing can be done with a button-press while writing). When you reach the end of the writing area, the text will scroll left after a pause depending on those speed settings, so all you have to do is move back to the start of the writing area again and continue writing. A small portion of the previous block will be left visible so you can maintain letter spacing. It’s smart enough to detect if you meant things to appear together, if writing while the scrolling happens.
- Hyper-note mode: A more quick-and-dirty method doesn’t auto-scroll at all but rather detects when you yourself start back at the beginning of the line. In other words, you write until you run out of space, and then start writing at the front again. It will automatically detect what you are doing and shove the old material off to the side for you. This method is a bit faster as you don’t have to wait for the scroller to kick in, but it is more difficult to keep everything lined up right since you kind of have to guess at where the next letter should go.
Writing then becomes a process whereby you completely ignore line width and zoom levels. You just write continuously until you are done. It will shrink the result, and by analysing your handwriting, figure out where word separations are, adapting to your style. The end result is a block of text that is word-wrapped, well aligned, and at a good size for reading. Paragraphs can be inserted into the stream as well, allowing for more lengthy notes.
Disadvantages here: The system is definitely set up for left-to-right languages. However, I tried locking the device rotation, spinning it upside down, and writing right-to left (which the application perceived to be left to right, upside down) and it seemed to be working just fine. So right-to-left and top-down language authors could try rotating the application to get the right behaviour out of it.
So what about the letterforms themselves? If you’ve attempted to do any handwriting before on the iPad with an application that doesn’t perform any kind of smoothing or analysis on your strokes—you know the result can be less than legible. Swiping your finger around just isn’t something we have the muscle memory for. UYH has four different settings for letterform assistance. Completely off, what you write is what you get. If you are a natural, this might be your best mode, though. Then three levels of increasing calligraphic embellishment, getting more difficult to master the higher you set it. The calligraphic hand looks quite nice, but takes some getting used to—the middle-range settings will probably be more comfortable to new users.
Note presentation and storage is, like the entry format, innovative and different. There are about a half dozen different “themes” which are just pen colours really, which you can title if you please. And this is good because the storage model is such that you’ll probably want to have things organised by type, using these themes.
Each theme gets eight slots. I know, it sounds bad, but it gets better. That’s eight slots, not eight notes. A slot can, much like Scrivener, be a note and a folder all at once. Just tap any note’s right-arrow and you’ll get a new eight-slot set beneath it. There is no limit to how many of these you can have.
Consequently, you’ll probably want to organise your themes into large groups, and then use the top level or two for folders, and maybe set aside one or two themes for quick notes and tasks to remember to do. Speaking of which, it’s not a half bad to-do list either. Each slot can be set to four different states. Starred, normal, dimmed, and checked. Each mode has a different display quirk. Starred items literally pulse in brightness—you can’t ignore them like you can flagged items in some task managers! Normal and starred items both also add to the badge counter of the application, showing you how many items are active. Dimmed just, as it sounds, dims the text a bit and removes it from the badge counter. Checked off largely looks like dimmed, but has a checkmark next to it as well.
Checked items are one step away from deletion. The Zap key will remove all checked items, making it easy to clear out finished tasks.
So as you can the see, the storage model is a bit of a twist as well. It works as a simple grocery list type notepad; a handwritten folder system; or a journal with multi-page length notes.
Here are the things I wish it did differently:
- Moving items around is a little tricky. It is simple enough to cut a note from one place and paste it beneath another, but because the only way to paste is to tap and hold on a note—you can’t paste into the top level.
- I wish you could select left-alignment instead of centre-alignment for text display. With word-wrapped notes it isn’t much of an issue, but it makes quick lists look a little strange.
- And on that note I wish the paragraph break inserted a little space, rather than just cutting to a new line.
- I like that they are approaching the storage problem differently, and that it allows for a variety of thought-types rather easily—but I think I still would prefer a more standard browser/paper interface more along the lines of Simplenote or the upcoming Plaintext.
Largely just quibbles. Everything else about it is really nice. It is simple to e-mail single notes to yourself, or the entire current slate page in PNG format. There are a bounty of preferences with which you can fine-tune the behaviour. The appearances is attractive, and even though it operates in a light on dark theme, you can opt to send out the e-mailed copies in inverse dark-on-white for easier transcription into the computer.
If the thought of writing notes and ideas out by hand still entices you, but you haven’t found an ideal writing environment for it, this one might do the trick. I’m pleased with it.
If unsure, they do have a free version at iPhone resolution, which should give you an idea over whether or not it will work out.
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1.
Really, the pun wasn’t intended!
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Interesting article, as always, and good to see you recommending - and using - Simplenote (especially since, as mentioned upthread, Scrivener 2.0 will allow syncing with it - although I seem to recall that you don’t use Scrivener much these days yourself, so it may be of limited use to you personally 