My son Clément really likes computers and Pocket PC devices. More than pens and papers. I even gave him my old HP Jornada 545. He’s also having some difficulties with handwriting and precision. So I thought I’d use that attraction to my Windows Mobile phone to make him practice a little. I made an application, called FirstPen, for practicing handwriting.
The idea is simple. You must complete the gray outline the best you can, without drawing outside. After each letter, the application calculates how well you did it.
This is a first draft, and I need feedback to make sure I’m on the right track. For example, a feature not yet implemented would be to make sure letters that must be done in a single or two strokes are made in a single or two strokes. Another one would be to make sure letters are started at the correct position.
I’m also looking for fonts that best match how children learn to write at school. It seems every font I find has its flaws. Here are the fonts I’m currently supporting:
As you can see, some of them do not support accented chars, which is a problem for me, but isn’t for English users. Others have guiding lines. This can be very useful, but in order for my precision algo to successfully determine if a letter is well done or not, the letter to draw must be gray, and other decorations must be a lighter green or red. That’s why I must manually edit each letter to make those guiding lines green, like this:
This is a painful task I’d really like to get rid another way, but since I like the idea, I’ve completed the “DR BY 2” font as a proof of concept. This also opens the door to green helpers, like arrows for direction.
So, if you want to try this out yourself, upload this CAB file to your Windows Mobile device, install it, and give me your impressions. I do not intend of charging for this app. If it grows better with your feedback, everybody will benefit from it, for free.
By the way, the CAB file is 3 megs because of the embedded images, but I haven’t run PNGCrush on them yet. It should get smaller. Please note that it also requires the .NET 2.0 Compact Framework. It should work on Pocket PC 2003 devices, and Windows Mobile 5 and 6.