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Write – A word processor for handwriting
- DoctorPenguin 8y agoThis is terrible
- HuangYuSan 8y agoBut why?
- themodelplumber 8y agoI say this a little bit tongue in cheek, and I'm sure the DV's will pile on, but I once took some classes in handwriting analysis [yes, I know] and they actually turned out to be fascinating. Would do again in a heartbeat, all things considered. Anyway the author's handwriting (or the font they picked), seen through that model, seems to indicate an (impressively) imaginative personality with a reduced preference for what you might call practicality. :-) Just thought it was amusing given your question.
- corerius 8y agoI really like the looks of that, but the dates on the blog! Is it dead, Jim?
- nkrisc 8y agoWoe to the screenreader user who stumbles upon this site.
- detritus 8y agoPerhaps I'm being dense and ignorant, but how much use would a blind person have for a handwriting application on a touch-screen device?
- nkrisc 8y agoNot everyone who uses a screenreader is completely blind. Vision impairment is quite a wide and varying spectrum. Also the person viewing the site might not be the person who will be using the software. Perhaps it's not applicable here, but imagine a scenario where the person responsible for purchasing the software uses a screenreader.
- somebodythere 8y agoAlso the website is a showcase of the notes -> website feature, however the resulting website is not accessible.
- msb 8y agoThat's a fair question. If the website was accessible, we might be able to learn the answer:) From the perspective of HN, the usefulness of the linked content is far less important than a person's ability to participate in the discussion. The product might not be useful for a blind user, but there is no reason for the content that explains it to be inaccessible.
- messe 8y agoWell, that may just be the least accessible website I've seen that ostensibly consists solely of text.
- vanderZwan 8y agoArguably, it consists solely of drawings that happen to be text.
- TomK32 8y agoTurns out screenreaders do use title and desc tags from svg. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4697100/accessibility-recommended-alt-text-convention-for-svg-and-mathml https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4697100/accessibility-re...
- hk__2 8y ago> Turns out screenreaders do use title and desc tags from svg This site has zero title or desc tags in its SVG.
- Reedx 8y agoGranted, but I can see why they did it from an artistic perspective. They're going all in on handwritten text and being genuine to that idea. Though they could use a font that looks handwritten, it's not the same and wouldn't reflect the product as accurately.
- rrix2 8y agoThe website is directly exported from the app, as a directly useful demo. I think that's the point of doing it that way.
- pasta 8y agoThis is a nice experiment. But ofcourse not very usefull. For example you cannot copy paste the text. But if you like something like this then you can use Inkscape for example to: Write all letter on a peace of paper Scan it and import in Inkscape Trace the bitmap to vector Create a font from all the character There are a lot of tutorials online.. Edit: looks like the title changes. My comment is about the website not about the app which the title now refers to. The title was something like "a handwritten website"
- techbio 8y agoThe page describe copy/paste functionality towards the bottom. Would you mind saving someone the time to validate the two conflicting statements and explain the disagreement?
- pasta 8y agoAh I was refering to the website because the title is also about a handwritten website. I'm using Firefox and I cannot select any text. That's also why I commented about how to create your own handwritten font that can be used for a website.
- akavel 8y agoI found the app awesome for quick writing with a stylus on a MS Surface (probably works on other tablets/tablet PCs too). It seems the development has stopped a few years ago, unfortunately; I'm very happy the author still at least makes the app available for download. And thanks to the HTML+SVG format used, the documents created in the app are at least open and future proof! It would be nice if someone wrote an extension/post-processor applying some OCR to the SVGs, so that plain text could be extracted. I tried to do something like this myself, but failed. What was most annoying was that the SVGs the app writes are actually outlines of the pen strokes, after applying "pen width". As far as I've seen, OCR systems prefer raw strokes as input, ideally with pen pressure information. I don't have enough experience in Machine Learning either to try to build a new model for this use case from scratch. edit: A sample article draft/experiment I wrote with it: - as a HTML+SVG: https://akavel.github.io/post/2018-05-31-stylish-elephants/2018-05-31%20stylish%20elephants.html https://akavel.github.io/post/2018-05-31-stylish-elephants/2... - as a PDF: https://akavel.github.io/post/2018-05-31-stylish-elephants/2018-05-31%20stylish%20elephants.pdf https://akavel.github.io/post/2018-05-31-stylish-elephants/2...
- pbsurf 8y agoI'm hoping to add some rough OCR to allow searching in the future. In the meantime, if you turn off pressure sensitivity (Pen menu -> Custom Pen), you'll get raw strokes in the SVG instead of filled paths.
- joe_the_user 8y agoEven inaccurate OCR could be cool if it appeared on separate, correctable pane.
- akavel 8y agoOh, cool, didn't think of it! On to different projects now, but maybe some day... if you don't do it earlier yourself ;) (Though I actually like the pressure sensitivity feature very much...) Also, in case you'd come back to this reply at some point in future: one feature I'd also love (I think I even wrote an email to you about it at the time) would be easy pasting of images into the document, and a "knife" tool, which would allow cutting them to parts along drawn lines. (And then moving and processing them separately.) I don't remember what exact use case I had for this, but I remember missing it badly. Ah, and there was some problem with not being able to easily paste links into the document purely with stylus, i.e. without reaching for keyboard. I used Write once for writing a journal from a trip, with photos, and I think I might have had to edit the raw HTML/SVG to add links from thumbnails to full photos, or something like this.
- vinceguidry 8y agoShut. Up. And. Take. My. Money. This looks like the tool I've been missing for years. edit: oh, development's stopped. Oh well, back to my side project.
- akavel 8y agoSee above — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17859000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17859000 — apparently, the author has some plans for revival! :) And by the way, the app's actually already usable as is.
- corerius 8y agoYou know, that's a good point. It would be great if people simply finished things and called them good sometimes. Hopefully they don't find a way to stick hand-written ads on the side for the free version.
- vinceguidry 8y agoPay for software. Plz, plz pretty plz. I will easily drop $30-50 just to try a piece of beta software whose value prop matches a need I have. You have the money, indie devs need the money way more than you do, and they need to be rewarded for greenfield development. $100-200 for a mature tool that actually solves the problem and is sufficiently hackable is well within the bounds of what I'm willing to spend. Devs that don't have the money for these tools have a great way to get into the software world, use FLOSS tools to greenfield a new tool and collect $30-50 from anybody interested. Can we make this happen? It would be amazing.
- akavel 8y agoIn case of this particular software, I actually wanted to pay/donate, but couldn't find a link for this IIRC. (Or it could have been via credit card, and I didn't have a credit card.) I'm curious if there's some way for a dev to easily add a widget/button to get paid/donated for a piece of software. Ideally, with any tax etc. problems handled too. I also created some FLOSS software, and would be cool if I could just slap a button in the Readme, or in the app itself, and have a chance to get donations if someone wants to express appreciation this way.
- pbsurf 8y agoCreator here. Although the site hasn't been updated in a while Write isn't dead - there will be a major update coming out in a few months.
- akavel 8y agoOh, wow! Awesome to hear! :) All the best luck with the development. I'm still using the app occasionally. I miss some features, but it's useful to me as-is already.
- jason_slack 8y agoHello. Maybe we can talk. I started a handwriting app (ios and android) a few years ago that doesn't use MyScript or WritePad but didn't have time to work on it due to work responsibilities and getting a new education. C++, OpenCV. Perhaps my work can help you out. Happy to share it.
- komali2 8y agoGreat to hear. I swap out your app and xournal regularly as I sort out a suitable workflow replacement for onenote. I'm curious what sort of things are in the pipeline? Very grateful for the work you've done so far!
- siruncledrew 8y agoDo you have any plans to make the code publicly available? If not, I understand. This would be a really great open-source project that could be trained to automatically produce transcribed plain-text that could be copy-pasted into other applications.
- devrod 8y agoThe original version of Microsoft's WordPad was called Write. Any concerns about trademark issues? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Write https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Write
- mixmastamyk 8y agoThe word write is pretty generic.
- poizan42 8y agoThe name choice is unfortunate, "Write" was the name of WordPad before Windows 95, even to this day if you write "write" in the run dialog in Windows it will open WordPad.
- kovek 8y agoImagine if you make a subset of these features available in text inputs (browser and apps) with a custom Android distribution. A step after that and you can make a big step in personal computing. This is the first step towards something I've been thinking about. Maybe I really should just publish my ideas online instead of waiting until I'm ready to work on them.
- satyrnein 8y agoI wrote a similar article, including a video of how the interactions work: https://medium.com/@eshan/the-case-for-the-stylus-28094a0abd34 https://medium.com/@eshan/the-case-for-the-stylus-28094a0abd... I went on to buy a Galaxy Note tablet with the intention of trying to implement it somehow, but I never really got anywhere.
- mitjak 8y agoI've literally been brainstorming something very similar the past few months, as an iOS app. This is really neat!
- camtarn 8y agoNice. MS OneNote had exactly this functionality and it was super useful for taking notes in math/engineering classes. Good to see a non-MS product taking it on, and producing open output by default.
- komali2 8y agoI think waaay too much about this. Started when I took notes on my surface in onenote during a coding bootcamp. Between multi-color pen switching, ability to paste in pics of slides and screenshots of code, and type in code when necessary, it was the ultimate note taking situation. Made me realize the reason I was a shit student in college was straight up because I took garbage notes. But, the surface/windows is not the ideal programming environment for me. I prefer linux flavors (Debian/Ubuntu usually). So I've been on this like three year quest to get the ultimate note taking, programming, plus misc task tool setup. Ended up with a thinkpad x1 yoga, all the bells and whistles. Great machine. Tried having a VM running Debian so I could quickly switch from that to onenote, but the VM performance when closing and opening the lid was funky. So, dual boot time, and time to find a onenote replacement. Not so bad a deal because onenote offline mode and syncing are notoriously bad (not that I'd expect otherwise, it seems like a tricky problem to solve). Deep down the rabbit hole turns up two apps: Write and Xournal. (Onenote chrome doesn't work because no pressure sensitivity and no offline mode) Write is exciting because it works out of the box, has infinite scrolling, quickly can switch pen colors, and a very interesting save scheme. Their files are just HTML with svgs. I'm exploring and automatic upload system that simply renders all my notes as a GitHub pages thing somewhere, with links for directory's files. Open to suggestions, there. Xournal is definitely a more configurable, heavy hitter app. It was easier to install, has way more configuration options (mildly annoying as you gotta tick a box to get pressure sensitivity on), and allows you to type text in or paste images. However, it doesn't have infinite, expanding page scrolling. You have to hit "next page" to be presented with a new blank canvas, or, set your page length to something absurd, which concerns me for memory management reasons. Anyway, like I said, I think WAY too much about this, but I'm very open to suggestions/input.
- komali2 8y agoToo late edit: Actually, I just checked, xournal doesn't seem to allow pasting in images. I could have sworn I did it before but I don't see any in any of my save files.
- criddell 8y agoIf this project interests you, check out GoodNotes. I've been using GoodNotes for a year now on an iPad Pro with a Pencil and for me it's a killer app. Since I've started using it, my handwriting has improved. That's not something I set out to do, but it happened probably because I wanted to help out the OCR engine. It's pretty awesome to run a search and have your handwritten notes surface. My worry is that the app only sells for $8 and that doesn't seem sustainable. The built in Notes app keeps getting better, so maybe the inevitable outcome is that the third party apps fade away as people switch to the core app.
- jason_slack 8y agoI am using GoodNotes for most everything now-a-days and it does indeed rock. I was happy to pay $8 but if it was more money I might have hesitated to pull the trigger because if it did not work well there is no refund policy on the app stores still. No trial version. etc. Perhaps things will get easier for folks to try the higher priced apps for a few days before they pull the trigger to buy.
- usermac 8y agoI too use GoodNotes with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil and feel just as you do—I take all my meeting notes on it.
- goerz 8y agoGoodnotes is amazing, but there's a couple of features listed on this "Styles Lab" page that it still could implement. Links/bookmarks would be at the top of my list.
- DenisM 8y agoNo encryption though.
- criddell 8y agoThe entire device is protected with a passcode. Isn't that good enough?
- rambojazz 8y agoThis is not free/open-source, is it?
- imonroe 8y agoInstalled on Surface Pro 4, doesn't seem to work. Just draws weird patterns instead of tracking the stylus properly.
- agentultra 8y agoIt would be awesome if some of the work that went into this could be integrated into ReMarkable. I love hand-note taking.
- LukeShu 8y agoWoah, this is cool. The "Linux" download is x86-64 only; I know 32-bit x86 is dying, so maybe that's not worth your time (I'd tried to download it on an old 32-bit ThinkPad x60 tablet), but an ARM build might get some use. As long as the download is free, may I ask why you chose to not also publish the source code? PS: "JetNote" and "JetDraw" links in "JetNote and JetDraw are no longer under active development." on the support page both 404.
- funkaster 8y agoI would love to see all of the Write functionality on a Remarkable tablet -> just tell me where to press "buy now"
- andai 8y agoThat would be amazing. I've switched from text based notes to pen and paper recently, and sometimes I'll switch back to a text editor when I need to move things around a lot, figure out a sequence or structure. So I was really impressed with Write's ability to combine the best of both worlds. If this could work on e-paper, that would be incredible.
- poppypetalmask 8y agoWas looking for an electronic writing device and would have have done bought Remarkable if there were feature like this. Instead I got Sharp electronic notebook. It was WAY cheaper, and working out great so far.
- eximius 8y agoThe application looks amazing. The music on the demo video makes me anxious, however.
- megamindbrian2 8y agoAwesome tool! God my handwriting is awful. Can it learn and convert it to text?
- asciimo 8y agoMaybe it can export bitmaps suitable for OCR libraries or services (like https://pixlab.io/cmd?id=ocr https://pixlab.io/cmd?id=ocr) to convert.
- nafizh 8y agoI am always on the lookout for new note-taking/annotation apps on my ipad. But so far no one could trump Flexcil. The 10$ is worth every penny.
- syntaxing 8y agoWow this is super cool. I wish I knew about this when I was still in school. It would probably pair really well with the PCs with built in wacom-style stylus.
- whateverme 8y agoPlease open source
- oxryly1 8y agoI have a Wacom Intuos pad. Between that input device and my bad handwriting my output looks terrible. Anyone have any suggestions on how to use it with this app properly?
- rkagerer 8y agoWhy can't I highlight / select text from the web page?
- Plaastix 8y agoFrom what I can tell, all the text is rendered via SVG.
- benatkin 8y agoThis reminds me of Note Taker by Dan Bricklin, the co-creator of VisiCalc, which I used a lot until I got a retina device and it hadn't been updated (it looks like that problem has been fixed). The UI for inserting involved dragging and dropping rectangular selections like in paint. Write sounds like it has a much more powerful editing feature. I look forward to checking this out when I get a chance! http://notetakerhd.com/ http://notetakerhd.com/
- verelo 8y agoWasn't "Write" the name of the word processor that came with Windows 3.1? Edit: It was! https://www.google.ca/search?q=write+windows+3.1&oq=write+windows+3.1&aqs=chrome..69i57.1813j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.ca/search?q=write+windows+3.1&oq=write+wi... Edit 2: I actually love this name. Hopefully you don't get any headaches over the history of this name.