I am a user of JOT and love the program. I started out with a demo programs
which WAS offered at their website. Shortly after getting my palm pilot and
trying to learn graffiti I found myself starting even starting to write in
graffiti on paper by accident. I think Jot is the way to go for someone to
relearn how to write the alphabet. They have fixed the bug that makes you
have to re-enable it before after a crash. I would say however that a
keyboard is still by far the fastest for longer writing tasks.
Randy

Hi, Julie,

I just read your comments on Jot.   Just thought I might add that CIC also
produces a program for $9.95 called Reco Echo.  I has a 5-day demo version.

All that it does is gives you a choice of entering your Graffiti characters
either on full screen or on the Graffiti area.  (I prefer just using the
Graffiti area)  In addition, it shows you your letters as you write.  It
gives you two choices of ink thickness, so you can see your writing in a way
that you would prefer.

The program  also has a Graffiti help screen.  The help screen is not that
useful, however, because to get to it you would have to leave the program
you are working in, open the Reco Echo program, and then open the help
screen.  It is much easier just to use the regular Pilot help screen that
can be enabled by the pen stroke.

I am proficient in Graffiti but I sometimes go too fast and then get sloppy.
With Reco Echo, I see what I am doing and this somehow makes me more
careful.

Barbara

My name is Fabio, I'm from Brazil and I acquired a Palm Professional in July and recently I bought the 2Mb upgrade.

From July 'till now I visited tons of pages and downloaded lots of sharewares (I registered lots too) and freewares and it's really helping me.

From all those softwares there is a combination of two programs that made my life much easier: QED + JOT. Yes, from all editors I used the QED was the best one. The fact is that I write a lot of long texts every time, my job asks for it. So I write at home, at office, at lunch time, rush hour in the car, etc. The Graffitti was good, but is not all that everybody say because I write too fast and that one stroke deal of graffitti anoyed me a lot since the symbol I used the most was the BACKSPACE. Yes because Graffitti always miss something, the "g", the "o", the "q", the "s", and lots more. Jot is much better. You said it is slow, yes in fact it shows the letter slower but it does not loose letters as you said. I can write an entire phrase without a single error while the same thing is impossible using Graffitti. The upward stroke to write extended symbols is not that anoying as you said because you don't use them frequently, but you DO use upper case letters and final point and the Graffitti requires two strokes to finalize them.

I have hundreds of other reasons to tell but the final analysis is that Jot is much easier, much more accurate and much more confortable than Graffitti.

One more thing: it really HAS a demo version to try it out. I did it and bought it after.

I am using jot for 1 week now with mixed feelings. I did not know about
the 30 days try-out period. I still have not decided wether to keep it
or not.

The problem mentioned about the "l" character followed by a space is
easy to overcome:

just write the 'l" as "L" in the grafitti area, and the space stroke
below the point where you wrote the "l".

Frederik Ter Borg

Hi Julie,

I just read your review of 'Jot,' and agree with you.  It's foolish to
move from Grafitti to Jot, especially since you can't "try before you
buy."  I wondered, though, why you didn't mention the ScreenWrite hack
written by Jeremy Radlow.  It allows you to write on the full Pilot
screen, shows you the letters as you write them (if you wish), and
doesn't require learning a new writing style, since it's "full-screen
Grafitti."  It appears to me to be only marginally slower than standard
Grafitti, but is well worth investigating if you haven't already done
so.  It requires HackMaster, and it's cost is a VERY reasonable $5.00.
If you haven't done so already, please check it out!

I should tell you also that I am *NOT* in any way affiliated with Jeremy
Radlow, his website or ScreenWrite.

Best regards,
John Jakszta

HI!

  I read your review on JOT and I agree with what you had to say. JOT is
slower and if you write too fast the letters do not look the way they
should. I think this angularity has more to do with the Pilot's slow
processor speed than with JOT. The Pilot's processor cannot keep up with
a fast writing style. This is also the reason for the slower speed
showing the letters when using JOT. The Pilot in general just needs a
faster processor. I tried JOT on one of the palm size units and it
worked very quickly and showed the letters exactly as I was drawing
them.
  You can, in a way, try it before you buy it because CIC offers a
thirty day money back guarantee if you are not satisfied with JOT and
Pilot Gear supports this grarantee.
  I believe you left out a couple of important points. First, I think
JOT recognizes the input much better than the Pilot's default grafitti.
I have been using strictly hand written entries every day at work for
nearly a year and grafitti is still difficult to work with. It is
constantly giving me the wrong letter unless I make a very concerted
effort to write in a very precise manner. This has always been a
frustration for me when making entries on the pilot. JOT worked right
off the bat with very few misrecognized letters. The slight delay is
worth better recognition to me personally.
  The second and I think much bigger drawback to using JOT over grafitti
is the inability of JOT to access the normal shortcut function. JOT uses
the shortcuts on the Pilot but they cannot contain numbers or be over
eight characters in length. Also there is the issue, as with symbols, of
having to make the entry rather quickly or JOT will "time out" and your
entry will simply disappear. I have two hundred shortcuts on my Pilot,
many involving numbers in order to track equipment where I work. I do
not wish to reconfigure all of those shortcuts especially since when you
get to that number of shortcuts  the Pilot's slow processor makes the
process of entering or editing shortcuts painfully slow.
  I noticed the problem with the L becoming a T also. You can do two
things to prevent this. Wait three or four seconds after writing the L
before making the space stroke (not a good option but it works) or you
can make the L on the screen and immediately make the space in the
normal grafitti area and the T will not occur (also sort of a pain).
  I hope you have found this letter helpful. I am looking forward to the
time when someone comes out with a true recognition program for
handhelds. Grafitti works but it leaves a lot to be desired.

Regards,

David Simmons

Julie:

Funny, I had the opposite experience with Jot.  I am extremely
proficient with Graffiti, and find that I frequently have to wait while
Graffiti catches up with me.  Jot, on the other hand, seems faster and
more responsive than Graffiti.  In addition, because Jot is "forgiving"
if, in my haste, I write a normal character rather than a Graffiti
character, I have experienced additional increases in writing speed.

As for bugginess, Jot is far more stable and bug-free than many other
commercial products available for Palm OS.

Lawman

Hi Julie,

I wrote to Jot's e-mail to ask if they'd consider at least a timed trial vs. purchase sight unseen.
They responded that there's a 30 day money back guarantee.
Funny, that wasn't apparent on the website (maybe I missed it?)
Seems a crummy deal for buggy software.
Grafitti works fine (except for the Tap Bug 3 Com still hasn't fixed).
Personally, I'll keep supporting the shareware community.
Thanks for the honest reviews at your site.

Lex Strickland

Julie,

I read your review.  I am sorry that you did not have a favorable
experience with Jot.  We are in the process of preparing a trial version
however, until it is available we do offer a 30-day money back
guarantee.  Our development team will review your comments and
incorporate them into their plans for improvements to this offering.

Best regards,

Andrea Steller
CIC

Julie,

I too, recently considered Jot... but I decided against it (without buying
it). Here's my perspective, including some information that you missed in
your article...

I had already been using Teal Echo which does a fantastic job of displaying
graffiti. The latest version 1.33 is faster than previous versions. Seeing
what you write can help you to write better for Graffiti.

If you really want to write on the full screen, there's Screen Write 1.2.2.
This is a $5 hackmaster extension which lets you write Graffiti anywhere. I
"tried before I buyed" and didn't like the problems (eg. selecting text
instead of writing on the display and vise-versa). It wasn't the extensions
fault, but it felt buggy with the way it responded.

If you are not happy with your Graffiti's recognition accuracy, try
TealScript 1.08. This is $17 of pure genius.  It lets you use the center
line (between the alpha and numeric) of the graffiti area for writing caps,
it also lets you customize graffiti for your handwriting. I read through the
manual, tested my graffiti (I wrote the alphabet several times and looked
for consistent recognition errors), and update the profiles. It took me
about an hour from initial download to final settings.  My accuracy in
Graffiti went from about 70% to 95%!!!

For me, that is well worth the time. Even for a casual user... say there is
a particular character that is always being recognized incorrectly. I would
correct the character I was writing, and restrict the character the Pilot
was displaying. Even a few minutes can have a noticeable impact on writing
speed. Also, poor accuracy sometimes discouraged me from using my Pilot...
not anymore.

All this and I don't need to learn another character recognition system...
your review made me just the happier about my decision to stay with
graffiti.

Sincerely,
Brian Devendorf

Julie,

Good review of Jot. I found a little more value in it than you, but I have the same complaints.  The "l" turning into a "t" is a particularly frustrating point.  Another is that you can't do the up drag stroke to toggle the backlight or whatever you have it set on.  RunWrite's stroke will also not work.  I'm not using it in full-screen mode much, but the inability to keep up with the ink is annoying.  Looked like it kept up fine in the writing area though.

Tom

Hi Julie,

Thanks for the review of Jot. I was very tempted to plunge $39
just to try Jot since they do not have a demo. However, your review has
shown that it is still an early product. Thanks for putting my mind at
ease and saving me the 39 bucks!

Guess I'll just stick to TealScript, which also has the Jot
implementation of Caps by writing in between alpha and numeric divider.

Thanks again!

\\'ilson Tan

Hey Julie!

Just read your Jot for PalmOS review and thought I would point something.
There has been a similar type program out for the PalmOS that lets you
write graffiti on the entire screen, and that would be ScreenWrite (a
Hack).  I have been using it for a long time and think it is great.  Yeah,
it doesn't let you customize your characters, but it does let you turn it
on/off for certain applications.. Just thought I would provide a "counter"
program to Jot (oh and I guess TealPoint also makes a learnable program
too)...

Thanks!

James Lee