System and method for continuous stroke word-based text input

Abstract

Many portable electronic devices are designed to utilize only a touch-screen for text input, generally using some form of stylus to contact the screen. Such devices generally input text using some form of handwriting recognition, which is slow and often inaccurate, or an on-screen keyboard, which essentially requires the user to perform ''one-finger'' typing, often on a reduced-size keyboard. The Continuous Stroke Word-Based Text Input System allows someone to use a small on-screen keyboard to quickly enter words by drawing a continuous line that passes through or near the keys of each letter in a word in sequence without lifting the stylus (similar to a children's connect-the-dots drawing). The user traces an input pattern for a word by contacting the keyboard on or near the key of the first letter of the word, then tracing through each letter in sequence, lifting the stylus from the screen upon reaching the last letter. In one preferred embodiment, the user traces a small circle around each double-letter that occurs in the word to reduce ambiguity. In another preferred embodiment, a database of words is organized according to the first and last letters so that only a small number of words need to be explicitly scored for each input pattern. In another preferred embodiment, the expected path length corresponding to each word is stored in the database and is compared to the actual input path length entered to further limit the number of words to be explicitly scored. The input pattern is analyzed to identify inflection points of various types, each of which has a greater or lesser probability of corresponding to a letter of the word being input. Words are scored according to the average distance from each letter to the nearest inflection point (or to the nearest point of the traced line if there are more letters in the word than detected inflection points in the input pattern).

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to text entry systems, and more particularly, to touch screen text entry systems. Background technique [0002] The origins of the modern keyboard as the primary method of entering text from humans to machines date back to early printers in the 19th century. With the advent of computers, it was a natural progression to adopt the typewriter keyboard as the primary method of entering text. For skilled typists, it remains the fastest possible way to enter text into a computer. [0003] With the ongoing effort to make computers smaller and more portable, physical keyboards have become one of the most important limiting factors in how small devices can get: computer designers can't change the physical size of a human finger. Thus, computers without physical keyboards have been devised for certain portable applications that use touchscreen-based input methods as the primary form of human-machine interface (for people who are p...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

On-screen keyboards have been used primarily for devices that lack a standard keyboard, such as some public kiosks and personal digital assistants (PDAs), handheld computers that are too small to accommodate a physical keyboard

They are also often used by individuals with disabilities that prevent them from using a physical keyboard

[0012] On-screen keyboards have two major drawbacks: first, they take up valuable screen space on the computer needed for any task that requires text input, and second, and more importantly, they are slow because the user has to type one letter at a time - effectively forces the user to enter text in a manner similar to tapping a regular physical keyboard with one hand

The system proposed by Niemeier adds a lot of complexity by requiring the user to react to frequently changing keyboard layouts, and limits the number of characters that can be selected after the initial character selection

The reason Perlin's method doesn't work is that it requires the user to perform too many different stylus movements to enter each character

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