Graffiti (Palm OS) - History

History

Graffiti was developed by Jeff Hawkins, who had previously created "PalmPr" (the character recognition system used by the Casio Zoomer) to recognize natural handwriting. By using a simpler alphabet, computers could easily recognize handwriting. Hawkins believed that people would take the time to learn Graffiti just as people learn to touch-type. Hawkins recalled his insight: "And then it came to me in a flash. Touch-typing is a skill you learn."

Jeff Hawkins also envisioned a single area for writing letters on top of each other. Other pen computers used traditional writing from left to right. The drawback of this is that users run out of screen space after a few words. Graffiti used a different approach. Instead of writing letters normally, users would write one letter on top of another, lifting the pen between them. This meant that each letter had to be one continuous stroke—so, for example, it would be impossible to dot an "i"—but it made it easy for the computer to simply recognize letters in the order they were written, with added glyphs for things like spaces and upper case.

Jeff Hawkins called this system "PowerPalmPrint" or P3. Other engineers at Palm revised and expanded the alphabet that Hawkins had created. Joe Sipher and Ron Marianetti created more characters and punctuation and also designed a prototype of Graffiti that ran on a PC with a tablet peripheral.

Graffiti was also implemented on the Apple Newton. In 2008 an unauthorized version of Graffiti was introduced for iOS (iPhone and iPad) devices. An Android version was released in 2010 by ACCESS CO., LTD. of Japan, which acquired the rights to Graffiti when it acquired PalmSource, Inc. in 2005.