LiveScribe Communication

Scrivener Wish List
1

Hello everyone.

Yes, I realize this would require working with another company, and as such could drive up the price of Scrivener (or maybe you could make this an additional addon that could be purchased), but I’m such a huge fan of both Scrivener and LiveScribe, I couldn’t help but suggest a marriage between the two.

The vast majority of my writing I type on my computers (both Mac and PC). Typing is faster and more legible. And, until recently, handwriting had to be done twice - the original script and then typed, especially if, like me, you write in cursive since most easily attainable OCR programs won’t read cursive script. But on beautiful fall and spring days, I enjoy writing outside. The problem of course is that sunlight and computer screens don’t play nice.

But the days of forcing myself to choose between an enjoyable evening outside or making progress on my work are gone. I recently bought a LiveScribe 3 pen (cue Händel’s “Hallelujah” now). It even reads my cursive script with great accuracy (the only thing I have noticed is every now and then, in cursive, a lowercase “u” becomes “a”; “r” to “s” also happens, but that is exceedingly rare. When I print, I have yet to run into any issues. I can’t say with certainty that this pen and its software will work for everyone. While my penmanship certainly cannot be described as beautiful, it is actually very legible [I was forced to take penmanship classes grades 2-6]). It also seems to actually try to read each letter instead of trying to guess what word I really meant, which was a pleasant surprise to someone who writes both mainstream fiction and sci-fi/fantasy. In “feed” mode, the current software shows your text in image snippets as you wrote them. If you swipe that section, it converts it into texts that can be copied and pasted into any text editor program on you iOS device. I currently paste it into OneNote and then, when I’m back at my Mac or PC, copy it again into my Scrivener project.

However, I would live on bread and water for a month to pay for Scrivener to read this pen’s bluetooth communication, automatically converting my script into text and inputting it into whichever document I have open. LiveScribe has all the hardware - the pen, the paper…everything. If you all could team up with them it would be amazing. It would also be helpful for them. Their app’s interface is terrible. Also, when the script is converted into text, it keeps the line breaks from the script (meaning your sentences will be broken into multiple lines because your sentence took up more than one line when handwritten). This is probably because LiveScribe was intended for note taking, not developing a manuscript.

PLZ PLZ PLZ PLZ PLZ PLZ look into this L&L! I know I’m not the only writer who still enjoys pulling out the old pen or pencil every now and then (actually, I still write almost all my poetry by hand). Obviously the code would have to be changed to work on Mac and/or PC, but LiveScribe already has both the hardware and the know-how to make a computer read our writing. Now if we just integrate that into the amazing novel writing structure and environment that is Scrivener, it would be awesome!!!

2

As someone who uses a Livescribe pen, I have to completely disagree with this request. The Livescribe business model seems to be to create a new product that does not integrate with previous iterations. By the time the L&L coders would get Scrivener to work with one of the LS pens, it’s possible that that pen would no longer be supported.

Not to mention LS’s reversal on allowing third-party developers to play around with its IP. They disabled the SDK, and there are pretty much no good third-party apps now. I’d be surprised if anything even could be done by L&L in this arena.

3

I know the conversion system isn’t pretty, but once you’re converted script to text in LS you can export to Word, which actually creates an rtf file. Then you can easily import to Scriv for further editing (in my case the pen only recognizes about 85% of my handwriting, so I have to convert to text, use the MyScript Studio editor (I don’t know if LS now integrates w Studio–it used to just integrate with a watered-down version, MyScript for LiveScribe. There was this hack you had to do to get Studio to work with the pen, but it wasn’t hard). I’d use the editor to fix the words it had brought in wrong, and then I’d move it to Word for serious editing. Which you can also do with Scriv. In my case, the pen battery died, and that was that.

4

@Sanguinius

I was unaware of LiveScribe’s history, but LiveScribe was really only a path to what I really want L&L to look into: a way to easily digitize hand-written script with OCR to create editable text. This is obviously not something that would be done in the next release - I’m aware it would be years down the line. But as all of us know, sometimes there is no substitute (or escape, depending on your point of view) for pen and paper if you are a writer. There are places where electronics are not allowed, or others where they simply aren’t as convenient. Eventually how you won’t to describe a scene, advance a character, or some other crucial idea comes to mind at a time when technology is out of reach. But you can always carry a notebook and pen with you. If L&L could come up with anyway to digitize and convert handwritten text, I could care less if they did it with LiveScribe or not - I just thought why reinvent the wheel from scratch when a good bit of the work has already been done.

5

It would be odd if L&L were to take on responsibility for integrating LiveScribe. The people who should are either LiveScribe themselves or Apple as device integration is essentially an operating system function not a user application. Would you expect L&L to integrate a weather monitor, no because the data should be available various applications not just one. The same is true for LiveScribe. You want it in Scrivener, an artist wants it in Sketchbook, a musician wants it in Sibelius.

6

I don’t know. MyScript created integration with LiveScribe, and so did Evernote and OneNote. Anyhow, I agree, whether it’s this pen or something else. It’s nice to be able to write beside a hotsprings pool while on vacation, much more comfortable to write in an LS notebook on a plan than use your laptop un-ergonomically, etc. Really nice not to have to drag your laptop around on short trips, the list goes on.

7

That said, the integration is really already there, since you convert to text and then export as an rtf, which you can then import to Scriv.

8

I love my LiveScribe pen, but I second the comments about the company’s unfriendliness to third-party developers and lack of interest in backwards compatibility. My attitude to them is similar to my attitude to Dragon Dictate: useful, but keep them in their own little cage where they can’t mess up my other stuff.

With that said, I haven’t even attempted to transcribe my cursive writing with LiveScribe. I can barely read it myself, and frustrated correspondents have accused me of encrypting on the fly.

Katherine