Category: software

No More Graffiti for Palm

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Due to a lawsuit from Xerox, Palm is abandoning Graffiti (its handwriting-recognition system).

PalmSource, the operating system subsidiary of Palm, Inc., announced today that future versions of Palm OS will not contain Graffiti. Rather, they will incorporate a modified version of Communication Intelligence Corporation's Jot handwriting recognition software, something it’s calling Graffiti 2 powered by Jot.

The impetus for the switch appears to be legal rather than technical. In April 1997, Xerox sued Palm, claiming that Graffiti was essentially derived from its patented Unistrokes technology. Unistrokes, or “Unistrokes for Computerized Interpretation of Handwriting”, as it is referred to in Xerox’s 1997 patent, is a system of text-entry using single-stroke symbols for computerized recognition of handwritten text. […]

So, presumably, the next Palms will have Jot. And, looking over the character guide, it doesn’t seem that bad. Most of it is actually very similar to Graffiti already, and probably only a few characters would be tough for me to un-learn (such as q/u/v, along with all the brand-new editing commands).

I’m pleased, though, that Jot supports writing on top of the main desktop area, as Palm always seemed confined to writing within its own little Graffiti-only area.

(Link from Slashdot)

Gnome 2.2 Coming Along Nicely

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

As mentioned on the Gnome-announce mailing list, Gnome 2.2 Release Candidate 1 has been released. Like the Linux kernel, odd version numbers are used for betas and development builds, so this release is officially 2.1.90.

If you’re a big fan of GNOME, but haven’t had the courage to install one of the 2.1.x unstable releases, now is the time to give it a try! This release candidate is very stable for daily use, with no horrible, time-wasting bugs to distract you (though it does have its fair share of niggles). We're very keen to see more testers play with the new code before we give it the big “Two Point Two Final” rubber stamp.

Bottom line: If you have children, RC1 won’t hurt them; and if you don’t, it won’t make you pregnant. Have fun! […]

Looking over the description and screenshots, it seems promising so far. In particular, Gnome 2.0 brought anti-aliased text to Gnome, and that support should be maturing now:

One of the great new features in GNOME 2.2 is desktop-wide support for fontconfig and Xft2, giving us enhanced font configuration and rendering on screen (and, in the future, on paper). […]

As I’m just someone that would be using a distribution for Linux, I’m curious as to which of the major distributions will be including Gnome 2.2 first.

WOTD: GandhiCon Three

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

Today’s word-of-the-day (or, I suppose, phrase-of-the-day) is from Eric S. Raymond’s report on The Halloween Documents VIII, about a leaked memo from Microsoft showing their concern of open source:

Everybody remember the Gandhi quote?

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Gentlemen and ladies, this newest leaked memo from Microsoft confirms that we are advancing through GandhiCon Three. […]

The set of leaked memos (there are eight now) are so-called because the first one was leaked right around Halloween. If you haven’t read them before, they provide keen insight into Microsoft’s thought process on open source. And the interspersed commentary from ESR makes for an interesting read.

Red Hat 8.1 Beta

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

I was excited to hear about the Red Hat 8.1 beta on Slashdot. Back when 8.0 came out, the fonts really impressed me, but some of that was through back-porting cutting-edge code into their current release.

With this latest version, my hope is that the anti-aliased fonts will be through stable software (and not just the latest builds from CVS). In any case, my PC-upgrade plans (which included installing Linux onto the new PC) have been put on hold due to my recent job situation (need a web developer?), so I can easily wait for this beta to mature.

Slicker for KDE

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

In this Slashdot story covering John Dvorak’s notion that Linux is too much like Windows (yawn) was mention of Slicker, a replacement for KDE’s Kicker.

Coding hasn’t started yet, but there are several screen mockups of a proposed design. So far, I’m very much impressed, and I hope this project succeeds. (There’s also discussion of Slicker development in the Gentoo forums, so perhaps it has a chance after all.)