Hi everybody! I have been trying to get back into learning Chinese (I took 2 years of it in college), so I recently signed up for an account at ChinesePod. There, I just heard about Skritter a few days ago, and already I'm hooked. So hooked, in fact, that I went out and bought myself a drawing tablet.

However, I have been having two minor problems with using the tablet for Skritter. The first is that when I want to make a dot (点) stroke, the movement I make with the stylus is usually so quick it registers as a mouse-click. I have to hold the pen down for a second and exaggerate the length of the stroke to get anything to pop up. So for a lot of characters, it is simply impossible for me to write them at normal writing speed and expect Skritter to recognize them as correct. Is there any way Skritter could interpret a mouse click as a dot stroke?

The other problem I have is this: sometimes I want to make a stroke that starts out horizontally, and the action of me putting the stylus on the tablet makes an ever-so-slight uptick in the stroke at the beginning. Skritter then interprets this as wrong, even if the uptick was only one or two pixels. It took me about a dozen tries to get the fifth stroke in 宜 to show up, even though I was tracing exactly on the blue flashing line that shows where the stroke is. Is there any way there could be a little tolerance for slight pen movements caused by the stylus coming into contact with the tablet surface?

Overall, though, I think Skritter is excellent! Keep up the great work guys!

Hmmm, it sounds like you might need to tweak the configuration of your tablet. What OS and type of tablet are you using? On Windows, for example, my Wacom tablet has its own Control Panel icon.

I would think that the clicking behavior you're describing should definitely be fixable by tweaking the configuration. My Wacom tablet has a setting called "tip double click distance" that sounds like it might cause a similar problem.

James

Welcome, Levitooker!

James is probably right about the dots; it sounds like a tablet configuration problem. Please let us know if you find a setting to fix it, so we can put it in the FAQ.

The fifth stroke in 宜 is a known problem stroke. The recognizer for it is really finicky no matter which device you're using. I've got it on my list of stroke recognizers to tune the next time around. Until then, it might help to slow down on that stroke.

There are difficulties presented by stylus wiggle at the beginning and ends of strokes. The recognizers are coded for it, but many of the strokes' training data don't have the wiggle in there (having been generated with a mouse), so it isn't handled as well as it could be. I don't think I'll have time to really maul on that issue for a while, though. Perhaps with a bit more practice, you'll see less misrecognized strokes.

Hope this helps. Thanks for your patience with the recognition; it can be a bit tricky at first, but hopefully as you get used to its quirks you'll be able to write really, really fast.

@James:

I am also using a Wacom tablet on Windows. I see the double click distance setting you are talking about, but changing it has no effect on my dot strokes. The tablet is simply recognizing any quick stroke as if it were a single mouse click and I can't find any setting that looks like it would change that.

@nick:

Nice to know I'm not the only one having a problem with that stroke. I'm already getting used to some of its quirks, and even some of the shortcuts too (such as writing |Z for a box) and picking up the pace, even though I have to slow down for the dot strokes to make sure they register.

Ooh, I think I fixed my dot problem. In the control panel, I tried setting "tip feel" to the firmest setting. Not sure exactly what that did, but a lot more of my dots are showing up correctly!

A 'known good' tablet would be a good addition to Skritter (you could even partner with a reliable website to sell them for some extra revenue). Having no access to my tablet PC (which works great though my screen is starting to get scratched) while my wife went away on business and took it for a couple weeks I bought a cheap one (99 RMB) that didn't work with Skritter (and returned it today).

Going back to using a mouse after using a stylus was just too painful for me.

Hey 2Shanghai, we're actually setup as a Wacom reseller right now, but before we can offer the tablets for sale we need to rework the pricing pages to include Wacom bundles, ChinesePod , and that all has to come after the vocabulary system is overhauled. Ah, so much to do! :)

haha, lots to do for you guys, lots to look forward to for us :)

I finally got a wacom a couple weeks ago of my own to play with! Definitely like it and think it helps with speed / memorization / transferability to actual handwriting.

Finally, any Ubuntu (or other linux) users with Wacom out there have a good way to set it up or recommended settings?

I don't have too much of a problem with dots, but every time I make that large left-to-right then top-right to bottom right L stroke that LEVI and Nick mentioned, it is very painful. very, very painful.