StrokeInput

Like others, I miss Graffiti on iOS. The official Palm version now owned by a Japanese programming company is Android only (I've read rumors that Apple killed or removed the official iOS ver. maybe because Steve Jobs hated Palm, Graffiti, styluses, ANYTHING that reminded him of his pre iPad / pre iPhone Apple tablet project called Newton, which was an unsuccessful flop for Apple.) Generally, StrokeInput is getting better with each update, but the latest version of this app is beyond annoying, and is almost unusable: Please ELIMINATE ALL editing key strokes except space, backspace & return (maybe the tab stroke is ok too -- I did miss it until its recent return). It's INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING to try to write letters, and FREQUENTLY get extended deletes, new-lines (instead of the letter "i" CONSTANTLY!!!), and other cursor movements. The basic cursor controls of space, backspace, return, and maybe tab are fine. ANY OTHER cursor controls or text selection controls are unwanted & unwelcome by this user, not because I'm a Palm /Graffiti purest, but because it GETs in the WAY of WRITING!! At the very least, please give us the option to disable ALL but the BASIC cursor control strokes, so that we can WRITE! Thank you for at least trying to bring Graffiti back to iPhones & iPads! Hope it gets usable again soon. EDITED 2023-03-16: Sadly dropping to 1 star. Earlier complaint about the letter "i" causing lots of "new lines" instead (friggen cursor movements INSTEAD of basic letter strokes) still a horrible problem (affects the number "1" keystroke entry, too.) The most recent version has LOST me quite a bit of writing time! as all of a sudden everything I have written with StrokeInput disappears, and nothing I do (i.e. shake my iPhone & "undo") brings it back! My writing effort LOST into some typographical blackhole, because of StrokeInputs unacceptable EXCESSIVE buggyness!

Like others, I miss Graffiti on iOS. The official Palm version now owned by a Japanese programming company is Android only (I've read rumors that Apple killed or removed the official iOS ver. maybe because Steve Jobs hated Palm, Graffiti, styluses, ANYTHING that reminded him of his pre iPad / pre iPhone Apple tablet project called Newton, which was an unsuccessful flop for Apple.) Generally, StrokeInput is getting better with each update, but the latest version of this app is beyond annoying, and is almost unusable: Please ELIMINATE ALL editing key strokes except space, backspace & return (maybe the tab stroke is ok too -- I did miss it until its recent return). It's INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING to try to write letters, and FREQUENTLY get extended deletes, new-lines (instead of the letter "i" CONSTANTLY!!!), and other cursor movements. The basic cursor controls of space, backspace, return, and maybe tab are fine. ANY OTHER cursor controls or text selection controls are unwanted & unwelcome by this user, not because I'm a Palm /Graffiti purest, but because it GETs in the WAY of WRITING!! At the very least, please give us the option to disable ALL but the BASIC cursor control strokes, so that we can WRITE! Thank you for at least trying to bring Graffiti back to iPhones & iPads! Hope it gets usable again soon.

I miss Graffiti, and there’s no reason (with an accurate modern touch screen) that it shouldn’t work as well with a finger as a stylus. But this app isn’t quite reliable enough to use. The biggest problem is that some of the strokes just aren’t recognized well. When I try to move left, more than half the time I get a C instead. When I try to move right, usually I get nothing, sometimes a T or other symbol, and only occasionally right. And so on. Maybe with autocorrect that used contextual information to guess what I really meant it could be good enough, but as-is, I have to keep looking at what I’m writing and trying to edit it (and because the cursor movement keys are the least well recognized, this is particularly frustrating). There are also some minor problems. The documentation doesn’t tell you how to switch modes, although anyone who wants this app probably had the muscle memory for them. The “try it here” box is light grey on very light grey so it’s almost impossible to see what you’ve entered. Most of the alternate strokes are missing. (I don’t remember exactly what they are, except a backward K for an X, but I do find myself doing something for other letters, like V and G, that worked on a Palm but doesn’t work here.) It’s missing a few characters like backtick. The font used for the help is missing some symbols, so instead of € you see nothing. A few extensions to Graffiti would be nice. In particular, after Palm switched to Graffiti 2 and then broke the hack that let you get the real thing back, there was a third party patch that gave you real Graffiti but also allowed most Graffiti 2 strokes (which was sometimes handy for rarely-used characters, because the Graffiti 2 is harder to draw, but easier to guess because it’s closer to normal handwriting), and worked with Graffiti 2’s WriteAnywhere and caps-over-the-line modes. Working with Apple’s standard auto-capitalization would be nice. Also, some of the features of Graffiti Pro for Android, like swiping up from the Graffiti area to overlay the help screen. Learning from corrections like Android’s swipe keyboard would be very cool. But even without fixing or adding any of that stuff, I’d give this app at least 4 stars, maybe 5, if it just recognized all of the major characters reliably enough to use.