The software is based primarily on upper-case characters that can be drawn blindly with a stylus on a touch-sensitive panel. Since the user typically cannot see the character as it is being drawn, complexities have been removed from four of the most difficult letters. "A'" "F", "K" and "T" all are drawn without any need to match up a cross-stroke.
The Graffiti system has been the subject to a patent issue from Xerox, with its Unistrokes technology (US patent number 5,596,656, granted in 1997). Because of this, Palm was forced in court to reconsider its use of the original Graffiti system from a legal and technological standpoint, and discontinued the use of the Graffiti system as it stood in further versions of its Palm OS software and instead licensed a variant of the Jot system from CIC. The two systems are not identical, however Graffiti 2 recognizes some of the original keystrokes (except the input method for punctuation and "i", "k", "q", "t").
In 2004, a judge has ruled in favor of the defendant, saying about the Xerox patent that "prior art references anticipate and render obvious the claim".
Image
A complete chart of the Graffiti characters
External link
palmOne website on Palm handheld input (http://www.palmone.com/us/products/input/)
Graffiti was originally written by Palm, Inc. as an alternate recognition system for the Apple Newton MessagePad, when NewtonOS 1 couldn't recognize handwriting very well at all.
Graffiti also runs on the Windows Mobile platform, where it is called "Block Recognizer," and on the Symbian UIQ platform as the default recognizer.
The original Graffiti system was the subject of a lawsuit from Xerox, claiming it violated Xerox's patent relating to its Unistrokes technology (U.S. Patent 5,596,656, granted in 1997).
Graffiti originally was the term used for inscriptions, figure drawings, etc., found on the walls of ancient sepulchers or ruins, as in the Catacombs, or at Pompeii.
Some graffiti may be local or regional in nature, such as the wall tagging of youth gangs in Southern California such as the Bloods and the Crips.
Graffiti is subject to different societal pressures from popularly-recognized art forms, since graffiti appears on walls, freeways, buildings, trains or any accessible surfaces that are not owned by, or under the control of the person who applies the graffiti.
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