Just discovered something new -- to me -- about my Surface Pro

[Arizona Willie]

I was checking into the split screen keyboard ( keys too small ) when I discovered that there is a built in handwriting tool!!!

I knew it was capable of handwriting recognition, but I thought that was for drawing on the screen in One Notes or on my Waco drawing tablet.

I didn't know this was built-in.

Tried it out and it is FANTASTIC!!!

I'm typing this on my desktop but the hand-writing tool is amazing.

My handwriting defies even me to read it after a few minutes.
But this tool analyzed it as I was writing and only mis-recognized one word.

But when you do get something wrong you can scratch through it and it goes away and you can do it again.

If you remove a word it automatically closes up the space!!

This makes note taking more enjoyable.

It needs greater publication to let people know it is there.

Or maybe I'm the only one who didn't know

 

[malberttoo]

Or maybe I'm the only one who didn't know

Well I wouldn't say the ONLY one... :wink: I definitely would have thought regular users of the device knew that already!

Handwriting recognition in Windows XP Tablet was OK, but you could train it, and it was pretty good after that. The recognition in Windows 7 was light-years ahead of XP Tablet, and although I played around with the training tool, I never needed it really. The recognition in Win 8 is even more refined IMO. I have seen multiple doctors comment that they were astounded that Win7/Win8 could interpret their handwriting without any extra training or fine-tuning.

Glad you found it!

 

[Arizona Willie]

My handwriting puts doctors scribbles to shame.

Often times I can't even read it the next day.

But the handwriting tool ( is that the right word? ) recognized it better than I can.
I was truly amazed at how well it did.

Wish I could get Dragon Naturally Speaking to recognize voice as well as this recognizes my scribbles.

 

[curney]

Dragon is awesome for me. I use it all day long with the onboard surface microphone and it is nearly flawless.

 

[Arizona Willie]

curney, I only have Dragon installed on my desktop. I have had several versions of Dragon and never could get it to work well.
It seemed like the more I trained it, the worse it got.
But lately I got the latest drivers from my array mic and it is better, but still not worth the money. Must be something about my voice. I've heard that it doesn't work well for everyone, and I can agree with that.

 

[icwhatudidthere]

In desktop mode, I also recently discovered that you can drag the keyboard around. Handy for entering text in a browser that doesn't move the content around for you.

 

[Igor]

For those who haven't discovered it yet, if you go to your PC Settings -> General -> Touch keyboard there's a setting called "Make the standard keyboard layout available".

If you switch this to "On" you'll find a new on-screen keyboard option with a full keyboard layout. This is useful if you want to use keyboard shortcuts that you can't use with the regular touch layout, such as Ctrl+Shift+Esc, Ctrl+Alt+Del, etc. It even has function keys albeit using the Fn key.

 

[tonyz3]

i sure hope MS decides to add a swype version to their keyboard. I sure love using it on android devices. I know there was touchpal option for S Pro but i did not have good results with it. i wonder if it has gotten any better since they launched it.

 

[tonyz3]

Must be something about my voice.

Maybe this has something to do with it.

 

[sharpuser]

The handwriting tool is indeed very good.

Even for my wife. Her handwriting looks like she wrote it with her foot.

 

[ScottyS]

For those who haven't discovered it yet, if you go to your PC Settings -> General -> Touch keyboard there's a setting called "Make the standard keyboard layout available".

If you switch this to "On" you'll find a new on-screen keyboard option with a full keyboard layout. This is useful if you want to use keyboard shortcuts that you can't use with the regular touch layout, such as Ctrl+Shift+Esc, Ctrl+Alt+Del, etc. It even has function keys albeit using the Fn key.

I can't find PC Settings in Win10. I have Settings and Control Panel but there's no "General" under either. Are you using Windows 8?

 

[garryknight]

Go to Settings, Devices, Typing. It's the fourth item down under the heading Touch Keyboard