Why can't I use my PDA as a tablet for PC input

[roddy]

I know a few people on here use tablets such as this one to work with their PC - you can write directly onto the tablet and the input pops up on the PC. Particularly handy for learning Chinese as it forces you to write the character rather than rely on pinyin.

Now my PDA has a touch sensitive screen. It can connect to my PC via wifi, bluetooth or cable. So I should, I reckon, be able to connect PC to PDA somehow and have input on my PDA screen control my PC. All I need is an application to make that happen. Where is this application?

Even if it doesn't exist, what about some kind of cut down version to allow people to use the Chinese handwriting recognition on their PDA to write to their PC. Even if you could only write to a small dedicated application on the PC and then copy and paste to other stuff, it'd still be a lot cheaper and easier than buying a tablet / tablet PC. I'm thinking an extremely simple text editor on both PC and PDA, and a bluetooth application on either / both to poll and send data between them. Hey presto, instant handwriting recognition for your PC (for those of us with PDAs, anyway)

Anyone want to code this for us?

[badr]

From a pure geek perspective, I think it would be cool but maybe not worth the time to build such a thing. Maybe MikeLove can have a better input since he actively codes for palm.

For the sake of practicing characters, there are these mini-input tablets that are sold for dirt cheap in most computer shops nowdays that would allow you to write characters and have them show up on your screen( for Windows).

Mac users have built-in handwriting recognition ( InkWell) that works with tablets from most major manufacturers

[smalltownfart]

I don't know about PalmOS, Roddy, but what you want is available for PocketPC in

the PPC Tablet Remote Control Suite: http://www.aacompserv.com/AACompWeb/Modules/PPCTablet/WhatIsIt.aspx

Disclaimer:

I haven't tried this myself, so I can't say for certain it would be OK for Chinese characters...

[mikelove]

This wouldn't be too difficult as long as you imposed some strict hardware requirements on the Palm end - you'd drive yourself half-crazy attempting to do this over infrared or a USB cable, given Palm's fondness for making dramatic changes to the way their OS works without telling developers about them in advance, but if you limited it to Bluetooth-enabled devices (and maybe also WiFi) it would be pretty straightforward. The tech support might be a bit unpleasant, though, given the sorry state of most Windows Bluetooth drivers.

However, if we did this we'd probably have to limit it to use within our (desktop) software only; turning it into a generalized input method that competed with our friends at Hanwang might not be well-received by them. Perhaps a "PlecoEdit" built into our upcoming desktop software - I don't imagine anyone would be too ticked off about that taking tablet input from a Pleco-equipped PDA. And I have to like any feature that requires people to buy two copies of PlecoDict Plus, once we've done the groundwork for Bluetooth data exchange all sorts of other cool features can follow...

[roddy]

The PPC Tablet Remote Control Suite looks interesting, and if it works well could be a reason for opting for a PPC rather than a PalmOS device (assuming there's nothing similar for PalmOS)

I did find this, but it was last updated in 2002 and user reports aren't very promising.

[roddy]

Now that I have a Windows Mobile smartphone, I've been looking at this again. Unfortunately the PPC Tablet Remote Control Suite linked above is WM5 only, and won't work with WM6. Has anyone with a WM5 device tried this? Or would like to in order to satisfy my curiosity?

[character]

Other than price, is there a reason you don't want to get a tablet pc or a Wacom pen enabled monitor? It's a lot more natural to write directly on the screen than on a device off to the side. Vista, for all its faults, has improved handwriting recognition, and the English versions (of Business, Ultimate, and maybe others) can turn on Chinese character recognition. You can also write directly into Wenlin or other apps on whatever OS.

[roddy]

Who said I didn't want to get a tablet PC? It's at the very top of the gadget list

I know there are potentially better / more professional solutions. However I'm not too keen on the idea of an extra peripheral as as I can easily be using my laptop in three or four different places a day (although admittedly two of those are usually 'my desk' and 'my sofa') and I would prefer not to have to carry / connect / power yet another device if at all possible. It's not something I can really call essential for me, but if I could get it running without the need for more hardware I'd certainly like to try it out.

Didn't know there was such a thing as a pen-enabled monitor though, that's one to file away for future reference.

[character]

Who said I didn't want to get a tablet PC? It's at the very top of the gadget list

Then you might take a look and see if one could replace your current laptop. For handwriting, it would be best to get one which has active, Wacom "penabled" pen detection. Some programs won't recognize the pen input (not sure which) if the sensor isn't using the Wacom drivers.

Some of the passive (touch) only screens have problems distinguishing between the pen and other inputs, such as the palm of the hand, causing stray lines (vectoring) to appear when writing.

[roddy]

Yeah, my next laptop will almost certainly be a tablet, but I've barely had six months use out of this one yet. Plus it would be cool to get this working, no? Must be someone out there with a WM5 device and the inclination to install the free trial of the software to see if this works . . .