8 ms·

Wow. So this is what it's like to lust after a Microsoft product.

79 points by mnemonicsloth 17y ago

mvbma 17y ago
TeX much ?
- daeken 17y ago
  TeX doesn't do OCR at all, let alone for mathematical expressions. Regardless of who developed it, this is quite cool. Edit: I wonder how much of this is straight up OCR and how much of it actually watches how the text is written. Could be some really interesting tech here.
  - Radix 17y ago
    Here you go. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630233 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630233 Hold on while I find the better link... Here you go: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improvements-in-windows-7-handwriting.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-impr... I thought this second one was pretty interesting. An EMR company CEO on a forum I sometimes read enthusiastically pushes Win 7 over XP. Apparently it's _much_ better.
    - daeken 17y ago
      Interesting, thanks for the link.
- halo 17y ago
  There are converters to convert MathML into TeX (e.g. http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/mmltotex.html http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/mmltotex.html).
- sneakums 17y ago
  Mathematicians are artists. They don't want to type a bunch of obscure computer codes and then fiddle with them until they get something that looks pretty. Mathematicians want to dash their thoughts down before they flee with the dawn mist, and then move on to the next shattering lightning bolt of genius.
  - eru 17y ago
    Actually, it's ok having something to do between the sparks of inspiration..
litewulf 17y ago
I own a tablet and I think that Vista really shines there. The tablet input id amazingly well integrated and the overall user experience is great. (I have the X61t, which I think is quite possibly the nicest piece of kit ever. Silly mac users will never understand ;))
- listic 17y ago
  How does tablet input feel like? You have to use a special stylys, don't you? What is the CPU, is it LV or ULV and how is the battery life? This is the field where I find all of the existing notebooks lacking. I wish manufacturers have addressed this problem, at least used the existing ULV CPUs! That said, I'm happy with my X60s, maybe it and the tablets are even the nicest pieces of kit ever, but they could have been made so much better!
  - warfangle 17y ago
    What does battery life have to do with tablet inputs? Tablets (at least, the typical kind and not the kind with built-in screens like the Wacom Cintiq) use relatively little power (much less than, say, charging your phone via USB). Different tablets use different technology. The Wacom tablets use an inductive charge (from the tablet itself) to charge a capacitor on the pen. This means that yes, you need a special stylus. However, because of it, you can get much more precise location and pressure readings. You also don't need to change any batteries in the stylus, as it's powered "over the air."
    - DougBTX 17y ago
      (I assume he was thinking tablet input => MS TabletPC)
      - ben_straub 17y ago
        Something like 95% of TabletPC's use a Wacom panel for the pen input, and those panels have similar characteristics to the Wacom consumer tablets and Cintiqs.
hypermatt 17y ago
Damn I could have used this in school ;) I can't even read my own math notiations ;(
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  I don't think I've ever seen ";(" before. I see a meme in our future... ;( Edit: I'm honestly curious; is this a common emoticon? It seems simple enough that I should've seen it before.
  - mcav 17y ago
    It's fairly common -- less so than :) and ;), though. Usually it's a typo, but sometimes people use it for humor or satire about something negative.
    - johnnybgoode 17y ago
      > sometimes people use it for humor or satire about something negative. Thanks, that makes sense. I guess I just haven't been on the right sites to see it.
      - mcav 17y ago
        Actually, I've got to correct myself a little -- looks like Skype uses it for crying: http://www.skype.com/intl/en/allfeatures/emoticons/ http://www.skype.com/intl/en/allfeatures/emoticons/
        johnnybgoode 17y ago
        That's strange, I thought crying should be :'-( I guess the semicolon could be seen as having a tear coming from one eye, but it's too easy to confuse with a wink.
        mcav 17y ago
        Agreed. I recently added emoticons to my startup -- ran into the same issue myself.
rkowalick 17y ago
The real question is: can it do commutative diagrams?
- antiform 17y ago
  These are the times when I wish that this technology was open-source (correct me I'm wrong), so if it was lacking, it could be added. I would love to have some similar way of turning commutative diagram sketches into TeX-ready form. It would save me hours of times fiddling with the current LaTeX packages.
  - eru 17y ago
    Do we have two category theorists here, or has the unlikely happened and commutative diagrams found an application in the real world?
    - yummyfajitas 17y ago
      They are used fairly often in geometry and analysis. Other times should be used but are not (I assume due to authors who don't know much latex). Regardless, I'm drooling over this. If only you didn't need to use MS word to make it work...
  - carterschonwald 17y ago
    if you use pgf/tikz in latex, you can do commutative diagrams pretty easily in a matrix style environment where you then indicate how to draw arrows between various entries and such. It takes an hour or two of playing with to get a hang of the notation, but its pretty nice, despite its quirks
jwecker 17y ago
I tried. I tried really hard. I tried to gloss over the part about one of the panels hanging. I tried to not think about licensing terms or the hard cost. I stopped myself from wondering how responsive or open the dev team would be to user input. I purposefully didn't look up whoever the company was that actually developed the software before Microsoft took it over - and I tried not to assume that that was the case. I'm exhausted.
- timdorr 17y ago
  Actually, I'm curious, who did they buy this from? I didn't see any indication that they did. Also, you do have to give them some credit for using a blog with open comments for their communications channel. They do read those things, so they can listen there as an example. Some credit...OK, just a tiny bit of credit.
- ktharavaad 17y ago
  While M$ does buy up many companies, a lot of fascinating original research goes on there too and they have a huge research division. I'm not sure if this is completely related but you can take a look at some of these papers published by Paul Viola regarding research done at Microsoft on ink group recognition and content parsing. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/viola/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/viola/ (scroll down) Dr. Paul Viola is also the guy created the first realtime face detector ( the one in openCV ).
  - eru 17y ago
    Simon Peyton Jones (of Haskell/GHC fame) works for Microsoft Research, too.
    - wglb 17y ago
      As does Tony Hoare, apparently.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- 17y ago
lallysingh 17y ago
If we could get a few more use cases for tables like this, maybe we'd see a combination trackpad-tablet input sometime in the future on some laptops? Or a secondary tablet input (as some particularly gigantic 2-screened monster laptops currently do). Pen input is just so damn natural, but writing over a laptop screen is terrible. Useful ways to map tablet input onto parts of the screen (like this) would be a wonderful middle-ground.
DannoHung 17y ago
I had a tablet once. It's... the problem is that it's still a laptop computer. It's just not suited for being a digital notebook, whatever that's supposed to be. It is simply not enough for there to be some parts of some applications geared towards tablet style interaction, the ENTIRE system needs to be built for it, and Windows with tablet input just wasn't.
- ben_straub 17y ago
  I've had mostly the same experience. I can type much faster than I can write, so notetaking isn't much of a killer app. However, the ability to add diagrams and sketches to my notes is REALLY nice. Things like this are really compelling: http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/archives/cat_sketchnotes.html http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/archives/cat_sketchnotes.htm... But the form factor and responsiveness aren't anywhere near a Moleskine.
asnyder 17y ago
xThink's MathJournal(http://www.xthink.com/MathJournal.html http://www.xthink.com/MathJournal.html) has been out for some time and has a very similar featureset.Unfortunately for them it looks like the 800lb gorilla strikes again.
veerasundark 17y ago
This is cool.

79 points by mnemonicsloth 17y ago

mvbma 17y ago

TeX much ?

daeken 17y ago
TeX doesn't do OCR at all, let alone for mathematical expressions. Regardless of who developed it, this is quite cool. Edit: I wonder how much of this is straight up OCR and how much of it actually watches how the text is written. Could be some really interesting tech here.
- Radix 17y ago
  Here you go. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630233 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630233 Hold on while I find the better link... Here you go: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-improvements-in-windows-7-handwriting.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/09/recognizing-impr... I thought this second one was pretty interesting. An EMR company CEO on a forum I sometimes read enthusiastically pushes Win 7 over XP. Apparently it's _much_ better.
  - daeken 17y ago
    Interesting, thanks for the link.
halo 17y ago
There are converters to convert MathML into TeX (e.g. http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/mmltotex.html http://www.orcca.on.ca/MathML/texmml/mmltotex.html).
sneakums 17y ago
Mathematicians are artists. They don't want to type a bunch of obscure computer codes and then fiddle with them until they get something that looks pretty. Mathematicians want to dash their thoughts down before they flee with the dawn mist, and then move on to the next shattering lightning bolt of genius.
- eru 17y ago
  Actually, it's ok having something to do between the sparks of inspiration..

litewulf 17y ago

I own a tablet and I think that Vista really shines there. The tablet input id amazingly well integrated and the overall user experience is great. (I have the X61t, which I think is quite possibly the nicest piece of kit ever. Silly mac users will never understand ;))

listic 17y ago
How does tablet input feel like? You have to use a special stylys, don't you? What is the CPU, is it LV or ULV and how is the battery life? This is the field where I find all of the existing notebooks lacking. I wish manufacturers have addressed this problem, at least used the existing ULV CPUs! That said, I'm happy with my X60s, maybe it and the tablets are even the nicest pieces of kit ever, but they could have been made so much better!
- warfangle 17y ago
  What does battery life have to do with tablet inputs? Tablets (at least, the typical kind and not the kind with built-in screens like the Wacom Cintiq) use relatively little power (much less than, say, charging your phone via USB). Different tablets use different technology. The Wacom tablets use an inductive charge (from the tablet itself) to charge a capacitor on the pen. This means that yes, you need a special stylus. However, because of it, you can get much more precise location and pressure readings. You also don't need to change any batteries in the stylus, as it's powered "over the air."
  - DougBTX 17y ago
    (I assume he was thinking tablet input => MS TabletPC)
    - ben_straub 17y ago
      Something like 95% of TabletPC's use a Wacom panel for the pen input, and those panels have similar characteristics to the Wacom consumer tablets and Cintiqs.

hypermatt 17y ago

Damn I could have used this in school ;) I can't even read my own math notiations ;(

johnnybgoode 17y ago
I don't think I've ever seen ";(" before. I see a meme in our future... ;( Edit: I'm honestly curious; is this a common emoticon? It seems simple enough that I should've seen it before.
- mcav 17y ago
  It's fairly common -- less so than :) and ;), though. Usually it's a typo, but sometimes people use it for humor or satire about something negative.
  - johnnybgoode 17y ago
    > sometimes people use it for humor or satire about something negative. Thanks, that makes sense. I guess I just haven't been on the right sites to see it.
    - mcav 17y ago
      Actually, I've got to correct myself a little -- looks like Skype uses it for crying: http://www.skype.com/intl/en/allfeatures/emoticons/ http://www.skype.com/intl/en/allfeatures/emoticons/
      - johnnybgoode 17y ago
        That's strange, I thought crying should be :'-( I guess the semicolon could be seen as having a tear coming from one eye, but it's too easy to confuse with a wink.
        mcav 17y ago
        Agreed. I recently added emoticons to my startup -- ran into the same issue myself.

rkowalick 17y ago

The real question is: can it do commutative diagrams?

antiform 17y ago
These are the times when I wish that this technology was open-source (correct me I'm wrong), so if it was lacking, it could be added. I would love to have some similar way of turning commutative diagram sketches into TeX-ready form. It would save me hours of times fiddling with the current LaTeX packages.
- eru 17y ago
  Do we have two category theorists here, or has the unlikely happened and commutative diagrams found an application in the real world?
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    They are used fairly often in geometry and analysis. Other times should be used but are not (I assume due to authors who don't know much latex). Regardless, I'm drooling over this. If only you didn't need to use MS word to make it work...
- carterschonwald 17y ago
  if you use pgf/tikz in latex, you can do commutative diagrams pretty easily in a matrix style environment where you then indicate how to draw arrows between various entries and such. It takes an hour or two of playing with to get a hang of the notation, but its pretty nice, despite its quirks

jwecker 17y ago

I tried. I tried really hard. I tried to gloss over the part about one of the panels hanging. I tried to not think about licensing terms or the hard cost. I stopped myself from wondering how responsive or open the dev team would be to user input. I purposefully didn't look up whoever the company was that actually developed the software before Microsoft took it over - and I tried not to assume that that was the case. I'm exhausted.

timdorr 17y ago
Actually, I'm curious, who did they buy this from? I didn't see any indication that they did. Also, you do have to give them some credit for using a blog with open comments for their communications channel. They do read those things, so they can listen there as an example. Some credit...OK, just a tiny bit of credit.
ktharavaad 17y ago
While M$ does buy up many companies, a lot of fascinating original research goes on there too and they have a huge research division. I'm not sure if this is completely related but you can take a look at some of these papers published by Paul Viola regarding research done at Microsoft on ink group recognition and content parsing. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/viola/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/viola/ (scroll down) Dr. Paul Viola is also the guy created the first realtime face detector ( the one in openCV ).
- eru 17y ago
  Simon Peyton Jones (of Haskell/GHC fame) works for Microsoft Research, too.
  - wglb 17y ago
    As does Tony Hoare, apparently.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
17y ago

lallysingh 17y ago

If we could get a few more use cases for tables like this, maybe we'd see a combination trackpad-tablet input sometime in the future on some laptops? Or a secondary tablet input (as some particularly gigantic 2-screened monster laptops currently do). Pen input is just so damn natural, but writing over a laptop screen is terrible. Useful ways to map tablet input onto parts of the screen (like this) would be a wonderful middle-ground.

DannoHung 17y ago

I had a tablet once. It's... the problem is that it's still a laptop computer. It's just not suited for being a digital notebook, whatever that's supposed to be. It is simply not enough for there to be some parts of some applications geared towards tablet style interaction, the ENTIRE system needs to be built for it, and Windows with tablet input just wasn't.

ben_straub 17y ago
I've had mostly the same experience. I can type much faster than I can write, so notetaking isn't much of a killer app. However, the ability to add diagrams and sketches to my notes is REALLY nice. Things like this are really compelling: http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/archives/cat_sketchnotes.html http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/archives/cat_sketchnotes.htm... But the form factor and responsiveness aren't anywhere near a Moleskine.

asnyder 17y ago

xThink's MathJournal(http://www.xthink.com/MathJournal.html http://www.xthink.com/MathJournal.html) has been out for some time and has a very similar featureset.Unfortunately for them it looks like the 800lb gorilla strikes again.

veerasundark 17y ago

This is cool.