Windows Phone Thoughts: Stand Up and Be Recognized! Calligrapher v7.3 by PhatWare Reviewed

Settings


Figure 23: Multiple configurations are supported.

Let’s take a brief look at some of some of Calligrapher’s configuration options. You can set up a number of configurations and switch between them quickly. This can come in handy for many reasons, one important one being the ability to switch languages, for those of us who are multi-lingual.


Figure 24: Recognizer options.

Recognizer options include adding a space after a word or phrase, and the separate letters mode, for folks who tend to write that way, rather than with connected letters.

Here you can also set the recognition delay. This is the amount of time you’re given to dot i’s and cross t’s, etc. The default value is 1200, and I find that to be a bit pokey for me, so I changed it to 800.


Figure 25: You can shrink your ink and make it pink, that’s how I like it, Sam-I-Am!

The width and color of the ink displayed while you’re inputting text can be configured as well. The default values are a width of three and medium blue color. I switched to red ink and a width of two. I chose the narrow width because I always prefer fine point pens. I find the red color works better for me as it’s more easily visible as your screen fills up with text and you’re writing on top of it.


Figure 26: Play Tribal Council with the letter shapes you don’t like.

Although the screen in Figure 26 is accessed by tapping the "Edit Letter Shapes…" button shown in Figure 24, you don’t really "edit" the letter shapes, you select and deselect them. Calligrapher’s Help more accurately labels this the "Letter Shape Selector". If you never use a particular displayed letter shape to input a letter, you can deselect it, as was done with the rightmost capital T in Figure 26. This can help to speed up recognition and, in some cases, help with a recurring recognition problem with a particular letter.

Even though it would most certainly be far more difficult to implement, I would prefer to have some method of actual training, so that you could directly specify how you normally write a letter. I’ve had a recurring recognition problem with the way I write a capital F, and none of the versions provided by Calligrapher match it, so simply disabling shapes really doesn’t help. I’ve had to learn a different way to input that letter when using Calligrapher. So if you use some very unusual letter shapes, you may run into some problems with the recognition. Fortunately for me, that one letter is the only real problem child.


Figure 27: Icons abound…

The toolbar that you see in the screenshots in this review is slightly customized. As you can see in Figure 27, there is a wide selection of icons that you can place on your toolbar. The only issue is that of all these commands, you can access only 10 through the toolbar. I think it would be useful to have an arrow that could drop down a "sub-toolbar" with commands that you use less frequently, but still would like to call up quickly without a menu. Another alternative would be a sliding toolbar like the one on the old Palm-size PCs.