I like this, and we've even seen an apple stylus patent (and since I typed this, several other tablets have them at shows, Synaptics has new cap screens with pen capability, etc... patterns are well-established and a couple modes (virtual keyboard, natural character entry, short-hand character entry, word entry; generally as a contextual panel, on the screen, the separate entry areas are no longer required technically so are not suggested -- I think cursors are still suggested, for the reason they work on mouse, to express modality; are you on a link, or in a particular tool, you get a different cursor), so easy to do, and coming back into vogue so we'd be on the cutting edge. ALSO: I have been thinking that the only issue with handwriting is corrections (not error rate, but fixing errors) and just played with some Windows 7 tablets. They have fixed it. Really want that input panel on my tablet. Some stuff to learn there: reduce clicks, like offer gestures for state changes such as 'correct' which switches to a character entry mode.

Make sure to mention finger-as-stylus inputs as an aside. Just emerging, but technically possible to do much the same with letter and handwriting recognition.

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Value in standing, moving, difficult environments, or for populations (or cultures) with little or no experience with keyboard entry, or no standard keyboard for the data type...

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