Hi. I'm in the trial period.

This sounds terrible; I hope the little skritter critter forgives me. But, I think I might want to see my own scribbling sometimes- an option to turn off your beautiful animation- a toggle, to let me scribble and then replace or overlay with your ideal form- to let me compare with my mistakes instead of taking them away.

Related, here is an idea for an accessory for people like me who like to see our mistakes: a corrective practice pad, with the little squares, that would enforce correct stroke order but not correct the form (as long as it's close enough to be recognized). Maybe, upon completing one character, or the whole pad, some sort of number could report the closeness to the ideal. With this, in addition to all of your other services, you could offer computer assisted/graded traditional practice.

Thanks.

I'd support this, but for a different reason. I've said this before, but I'd like to write the entire character before Skritter tells me if it's right or wrong.

At the moment Skritter just gives me too much information - principally the positioning of the first elements gives so much of the rest of the character away.

So when I come to writing a character without Skritter, I lose the fluidity I might otherwise have.

Technically this idea seems to be two sides of the same coin, so it's definitely one I agree with.

I agree with this too, I like the hints for characters I'm learning but when you know a character its too forgiving. Last week I printed off 250 characters to test myself. I did fairly well, but recognition writing by hand isn't as good as it is on Skritter.

I agree with taylor04 that, when learning a character, the hints and help are great. I also agree with everyone here that Skritter is too helpful with characters I already supposedly know.

My suggestion is having the help turn off or decrease significantly for those characters already marked as learned. This could mean refusing all strokes except those very close, not snapping to the grid until the character is fully written, or by other means.

I recall the Skritter guys mentioning something in progress that might deal with these problems to some degree. They want to break each character down by radical. If you write the whole radical correctly, it will then snap in place. Although this would still give hints from where that radical snaps to, it would be a big step forward in not giving away the character from the first stroke.

Skritter dudes, you're doing great work here.

I think what is being asked for here is a bit too difficult. It's hard enough to recognize a stroke reliably, let alone a character, from its hand-written form. Maybe just radicals is doable.

I'd suggest being tough when grading yourself -- if I start off thinking it's some radical and mess it up then I automatically grade myself a 2 even if I complete the character.

It's evidentially possible to some degree - write a well written character on nciku, and it's more than not the first one that appears in the 'possible choices' section.

I imagine this would be a little easier here, since Skritter already knows what character you're aiming for. It could look for the right radicals in the right places. Even if it still makes mistakes, you could grade things as now.

Maybe further down the line.

As for being tough on myself: I'm not clear when I 100% know the character, or whether Skritter's giving me help by the positioning etc. I guess I should stop and visualise every single character first - but that's not going to make for fluid pen and paper writing, and it makes Skritter itself less quick and more of a chore.

Actually, or simpler still: ask you to write the character, show you it and leave the grading up to you. If full recognition/snapping to place may take a long time, this might be a quick option..

One thing I have tried doing is looking down at my tablet the whole time as if it is a piece of paper. The only problem with this is, sometimes I think I finished the whole character without a problem and the first stroke wasn't recognized right! I can't think of any good option for this(at the moment) except for printing a list and giving yourself a handwritten test

I guess I should leave it to the real experts to comment but they are enjoying a well-earned holiday.

Before I say why I think that some of the proposals here are probably difficult, let me also say that I too feel that characters "learnt" on skritter don't always come out correctly when put on paper. In fact I have recently started having a sheet of paper at hand when doing skritter and first writing the character by hand then trying it on skritter.

@Byzanti "It's evidentially possible to some degree - write a well written character on nciku, and it's more than not the first one that appears in the 'possible choices' section."

Yes, but it gets it wrong about once in 5-10 tries, which would be irritating if you are practicing 100 characters a day.

Also, these are basically based on strokes and their order so a mistake in stroke order will mess things up completely. Also they don't take into account the "topology" of the strokes. For example, three "heng" (horizontals) and one "shu" (vertical) in that order input into the MDBG picks out feng (丰) no matter if the "shu" does not cross any of the "heng"s.

A very good point. Skritter has certainly helped my stroke order, something that doesn't go well with the sort of full recognition we're talking about here.

麻烦的！

"I have recently started having a sheet of paper at hand when doing skritter and first writing the character by hand then trying it on skritter."

Very simple. That looks acceptable and practical to me.

Good forum!

"This sounds terrible; I hope the little skritter critter forgives me. But, I think I might want to see my own scribbling sometimes- an option to turn off your beautiful animation- a toggle, to let me scribble and then replace or overlay with your ideal form- to let me compare with my mistakes instead of taking them away. "
I actually get this sometimes when I'm low on bandwidth. All my drawn strokes sit there while it waits for some response from the server, and then they all move into place at once. It would be great to have this as an option.

I subscribed.

About this topic I started:
Sorry I changed my mind. I no longer think it matters so much. A stroke involves technique (pencil, pen, brush on paper) and information (placement, proportions, hooks, etc). Skritter asks for the information part. Using paper too, to perfect the technique part, will always(?) be necessary anyway.
I expect to gradually absorb the form taught by skritter.

Good luck with the iPhone/Touch app!!

My method, for what it's worth, is to use Skritter and also write sentences by hand (a diary or just sentences) deliberately using the characters I know. Sometimes I write on paper and sometimes I use Windows Vista's Tablet PC Chinese input (which is a handwriting recognizer that works for Chinese and English); the handwriting recognizer works Character-at-once but doesn't help with stroke orders nor really with what a character should be drawn with part way through (which Skritter gives).

Late to the party, here; good comments all around.

I think we are putting off most tweaks to the way the recognition and snapping work until we go for the component-based recognition, as Thomas describes. I think that will be the right mix: few hints, but still gives you feedback before you write all of an incorrect or unrecognized character, and it operates on the chunks you remember (components) rather than individual strokes to express them. Since I'm hoping it will work so well, I don't anticipate trying many intermediate improvements.

For those concerned, the Skritter-plus-paper method does sound like a good compromise: very rigorous and still fast, just a bit of a hassle and no help with stroke order.