Graffiti 2

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Graffiti 2 is a new version of the Palm OS handwriting system, Graffiti, that was introduced in 2003. In January of that year PalmSource announced the change and explained that Graffiti 2 was based on CIC’s Jot and would replace the "old" (original) version of Graffiti. Graffiti 2 debuted in Palm OS 4.1.2 for Motorola DragonBall-based handhelds and Palm OS 5.2 for ARM-based ones.

The primary reason for the change was the fact that in April 1997 Xerox had sued PalmSource, Inc. over its use of Graffiti. After a legal fight lasting a number of years, and despite the dismissal of the case by a federal judge, Xerox won a reversal late in 2001 in the U.S. Court of Appeals.

As part of their press for the new handwriting recognition system, PalmSource argued that Jot and Graffiti 2 more closely followed the standard ways of drawing letters and numbers than the original Graffiti did; and they also argued that lowering the learning curve would attract more new users to the platform. But the move alienated many long-time Palm users, who were quite happy with the previous version of Graffiti, which they claimed was much easier to use (though perhaps not to learn).

The most prominent issue involved was the number of stylus strokes required to execute a character. The original Graffiti recognition software required only a single stylus stroke for almost every alphanumeric character. Graffiti 2, however, required the user to execute two strokes in order to create many commonly used characters. This was seen as a lot of extra work, especially considering "i" and "t" were two of the characters affected.

Eventually a "hack" circulated among Palm power users that allowed them to force the OS on their Palms to revert to the old version of Graffiti. This was a simple file copy until the most recent versions of Palm OS, which require hacked Graffiti libraries to be used, which lack a function used in the Blazer web browser, causing some text entry performed via this application to crash the handheld. The hack does, however, work with all other applications flawlessly.

[edit] External links

• Howto: Replace Graffiti 2 with Original Graffiti, PalmInfocenter, August 21, 2003.
• Howto: Use the latest Garnet Graffiti 2 on older OS5 handhelds.