Using Sketches to Edit Electronic Documents

Abstract

Calligraphic interfaces mimic the interaction of users with pen and paper, to which most persons are used to from an early age. This makes them a privileged way of interacting with computers in efficient and natural ways. One of the tasks more often made with pen and paper is to write and correct text documents. This is done resorting to several symbols with specific meanings, representing the changes to be made in the document. It should be possible to correct electronic texts in a similar way, using calligraphic interfaces. In this paper, we describe the CaliEdit text editor, currently being developed for PalmOS devices with that goal in mind. In its development, we followed a user-centered design approach. The task analysis phase, with the help of questionnaires, identified the most common symbols for the most common text-correcting tasks. The editor itself uses the CALI shape and gesture recognizer, ported to PalmOS, to help recognize those symbols. Several porting and implementation problems were overcome. Currently, heuristic and usability evaluation studies are underway to help validate the editor.