By Patrick Nelson
Windows 7 adds text prediction in new languages. Improvements have been made to the on-screen soft keyboard.
Windows 7′s handwriting recognition is pitched at Tablet PCs. Windows 7 users launch something Microsoft calls the Tablet Input Panel (TIP.) They write, and the text is converted.
The user then inserts that text into an Office application like Word. One limitation has been the languages that a recognizer has been available for.
Windows 7 adds fourteen new languages to the eight obvious Latin languages and four East Asian languages originally supported by Vista.
The new languages are Norwegian (Bokm’l and Nynorsk), Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Serbian (Cyrillic and Latin), Catalan, Russian, Czech, and Croatian.
Big improvements have been made to the handwriting recognition itself. Handwriting recognition is dependent on personalization. The engine needs to be able to recognize individual characteristics of a piece of handwriting. It does that by learning.
Windows 7 makes improvements to the learning functionality of handwriting recognition. The learning functionality was previously only available in Latin-based United States English and United Kingdom English.
Windows 7 adds six more Latin languages those from the Vista application–and support for all fourteen of the new languages which have been added in Windows 7. This should improve the user experience considerably.
Text prediction has been improved. Fewer letters entered produce a resulting match in Windows 7.
Improvements have also been made to the prediction Windows 7 makes based on the words the user has entered frequently and any corrections they have made.
Text prediction language support has also expanded from just United States English and United Kingdom English from Vista to French, German, Italian, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese.
New languages supported for Text Prediction with pen input include Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Text Prediction for Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese include both word completion and next word prediction.
Math expressions can now be entered via the new Math Input Panel in Windows 7. The expression is converted and sent directly to the spreadsheet or other application.
Developers now have access to a consistent approach from Microsoft, which will allow them to build math handwriting recognition functionality into their programs.
Microsoft is undertaking an aggressive approach in making Windows 7 handwriting recognition available to developers.
API’s are available and that should make it easier for developers to integrate Microsoft’s shape recognition technology into their programs.
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