At JKOnTheRun, I’ve just read about the Ilium Inscribe on-screen keyboard software for tablets and umpcs.

It looks like it just might work!

Instead of tapping the screen, giving you one chance to get the correct key, Inscribe allows you to drag across the screen between letters for a whole word. Using this method, Inscribe can determine the keys you were really aiming at by using direction changes. What a great idea.

Personally, I’m still a fan of keyboards but I’m very slowly coming round to the idea that keyboardless operation might be possible with some training. Speech recognition, well-mapped function keys, on-screen pen and thumb-keyboards and handwriting recognition used in the right places are going to reduce the number of situations where a keyboard is required.

If this scribe method is enhanced, it could evolve into a hybrid scribe/gestures input method where the shape is analysed and translated into the likely word using dictionary lookups, contextual info and spelling rules.

Steve / Chippy.