More Snow Leopard Screenshots, Chinese Handwriting Video

Cool! That guy's entering Chinese simplified characters while the computer automatically changes it to traditional characters (the menu was set to traditional on the first few seconds of the video).

This ought to save a lot of time writing stuff. I don't MS's handwriting recognition can do that :) Personally I use trad characters so that explains this ordeal :p


This would be right in line with a very likely iPhone, iPod Touch integration and synchronization with SL:

I think that'll be stupid lol. totally not practical. when your phone's not there it'll be this big hole :p
 
The feature of translating Simplified to Traditional has been here for around a decade, in other Windows-based handwriting devices. This is an essential feature as a lot of Hongkongers mix them up. In places like Hong Kong, Simplified Chinese is not appropriate for any documents unless they are intended for tourists.

Anyway, I would prefer typing in Chanjei. It types a character within 6 keystrokes (5 radicals + 1 spacebar for confirmation) :D
 
This would be right in line with a very likely iPhone, iPod Touch integration and synchronization with SL:
ipod-netbook-combo-thumb-400x287.jpg

Another thing that would be super cool about this is the possibilities of what receiving a phone call could do. Using the computers mic/speakers for normal conversations, and video could be interesting. However Skype features could negate some of this already.

I find the coolest feature is just that it would be a fully interactive trackpad. Think of the customization of buttons for use in gaming.
 
That is sweet. I hope they move to a black menu bar. It needs a look that fits in with the current Mac line. I hope there is a considerable speed increase.

The only things that piss me off about Snow Leopard is:
-no resolution independence'
-iTunes has not been touched and remains a 32-bit Carbon app

Things I hope for:
-sandboxed Safari tabs and a better interface than Safari 4
-QuickTime X supports many other formats natively (.mkv, .m2ts, and yes .wmv)

iTunes is a seperate app and has nothing to do with SL OS
 
What it showed in the video was the user wrote a couple of words in simplified Chinese, and the OS automatically provided the traditional Chinese writing as a choice. I don't think it's that hard to do the translation on the fly on Apple's part, but it's thoughtful that users can write words in simplified Chinese and the OS converts them to traditional Chinese.

The input interface looks very similar to what the iPhone / iPod Touch handwriting interface.

It's not 'translation' really; just different forms. With Unicode it has been pretty simple to convert whole selections of text from traditional to simplified and vice versa. Definitely a nice touch here to have it built it, perhaps in order to increase the speed?

As for the handwriting, it was announced a while back that Apple had licensed the handwriting recon for use with the Touch OS and Snow Leopard.
 
A couple of things I noticed while using the latest Snow Leopard beta that I have yet to see mentioned:

- Safari 4.0 has a newly implemented "Loading" bar in lei of the circle in the current beta

- Cut is now working in the OS (Command-X)

- Sharing Preferences now has a "Scanner Sharing" option

For Safari 4, I have it under Leopard and have not seen the loading bar... I can't wait to see because right now it's hard to tell how many % complete the page is done, unless you hack it under the Terminal.

Cut... Good Lord, I thought it would never be coming! I'm really glad it's there !

As for the scanner, I hope it means my HP All-in-one will be able to communicate properly through both of my Macs. Right now it's connected on Time Capsule, but I can only scan into a memory stick... oh wait, I remember I fixed it, but HP software is flawed and crashes all the time under Leopard, it works just in Tiger. So maybe if OS X 10.6 could support scanning directly through Preview.app, it would make me really really happy :) And it would make more space on my HD.... I can't believe HP apps take 86 MB and aren't even able to open.
 
I wonder how it would be possible to be productive using such an advanced language. I heard something like 50,000 symbols to memorize. It would be interesting what a Chinese person would say if they had to comment on a language that was equaling different from their language. For example, a language that takes it one step further by requiring you to use different color lines (32 colors). Then some different fill textures in some of the enclosed areas, and redirects to other symbols using cryptic GOTO commands and difficult mathematical equations embedded to express emotion.

A language which uses colors to differentiate the characters completely discounts the number of people with color blindness.

"Good graphic design avoids using color coding or color contrasts alone to express information, as this not only helps color blind people, but also aids understanding by normally sighted people."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color-blindness#Design_implications_of_color_blindness

Even more so with a written language. There is no reason to wipe out someone's literacy if there is no necessity to. Text with color is a "nice to have" not a fundamental requirement of communication.

Making the written components of a language harder by leveraging more than minimalistic dimensions(characteristics) dubious. Human languages have to be generative. Which means you are going to be stringing together components to get across more complex expressions anyway. Trying to pack higher density into fewer shapes is really just a balloon squeeze of shift the problem to another idea and you house a segment of the population when make the characters harder to differentiate. The latter does nothing to increase the breadth of communication.
 
It's amusing how Apple has seemingly decided not to take down these image sites. They must not care. Which means the real secrets haven't been revealed.

Good job!!
 
Simple question

I am new to Apple but why is there all this talk about Chinese text converters? Why does my Apple have a Chinese Text converter? This computer is sold in the U.S.A. and if I spoke Chinese wouldn't I want everything to be written in Chinese on the screen and not to just convert it?

Why has Apple placed this on our computers??
 
I am new to Apple but why is there all this talk about Chinese text converters? Why does my Apple have a Chinese Text converter? This computer is sold in the U.S.A. and if I spoke Chinese wouldn't I want everything to be written in Chinese on the screen and not to just convert it?

Why has Apple placed this on our computers??

To ease the transition when China takes over the world, of course. Which should be in, oh, five, ten minutes. :p

I think people are talking about converting between Simplified and Traditional Chinese, not Chinese and English.
 
GP - you rock!

Dmann - Love the look of Snow Leopard on your screen. Can't wait to get a new laptop when it comes out.

Thanks guys!

Richard
 
It's not 'translation' really; just different forms. With Unicode it has been pretty simple to convert whole selections of text from traditional to simplified and vice versa. Definitely a nice touch here to have it built it, perhaps in order to increase the speed?

As for the handwriting, it was announced a while back that Apple had licensed the handwriting recon for use with the Touch OS and Snow Leopard.

Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese characters have their own encodings in unicode. One cannot do translation by simply changing the font.

Simplified Chinese is a recent attempt to simplify Chinese writings. It is not language evolution but forced political policies. They reduced number of characters by replacing multiple traditional characters with single character, as well as modified the radicals. Usually a simplified character is mapped to multiple traditional ones.

For example, both traditional characters 幾(number around 3 to 9) and 几(small desk) are replaced as 几 in the simplified system. If you want to convert in the backward direction, you have to understand whether it is describing numbers or a desk.

If characters are entered one by one, translation cannot be done correctly. One has to check the meaning of the article in order to perform a perfect translation.
 
The screen is like staring at a light bulb with text imprinted on it. White text on a black background is WAY easier on the eye.

You must have perfect eyes, then.

Generally speaking, black-on-white is easier to read than white-on-black. Theory behind that is simple: the more light comes in to your eye, the smaller the pupil, thus sharper image. Just as choosing a f/8.0 aperture on camera makes sharper pic than choosing f/2.0 aperture. IOW, in dark conditions, the "aperture" of a human eye adapts to the low light and enlarges the pupil, thus makes the image less sharp around the "perfect" focus, thus forcing one to move the head more than in good light. And this is for the perfect eye.

It only gets worse if your eyes are not perfect. See the attached pic to illustrate the problem for people having poor eyesight; in low light conditions the white-on-black text looks something like this:

So, in conlcusion -generally- it is easier on the eye if black text is on white surface. The more light the better (for the eye). It is completely another story whether it is good for you to have dramatic contrast (dark room, bright screen) but for the eye the story is simple.
 

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You must have perfect eyes, then.

Generally speaking, black-on-white is easier to read than white-on-black. Theory behind that is simple: the more light comes in to your eye, the smaller the pupil, thus sharper image.
This is only true to a certain point, as neither extreme is particularly appropriate for long-term use. The trick is managing contrast in your color selection--high enough for readability, but not so high as to cause problems.

In the case of light-on-dark, it means not using solid black, because it causes bleeding. In the case of dark-on-light, it means not using very bright whites, because it causes eye strain unless brightness is considerably reduced.

The "more light" entering your eye theory you advance has more to do with ambient lighting than the properties of the display. If you are working in an appropriately-lit space, the color scheme of the monitor contents is relatively unimportant to pupil dilation, since ambient light is the largest component of total light in that case. On the other hand, the color scheme is important to eye strain, caused by too-bright light sources, like massive fields of pure white on a monitor.

On the other hand, eye strain on light-on-dark color schemes is a factor only in rooms with far too little ambient light.
So, in conlcusion -generally- it is easier on the eye if black text is on white surface. The more light the better (for the eye).
These two statements are largely independent--the correlation you imply doesn't exist. More total ambient light (to a point) is better for the eye; less direct light (again to a point) is better for the eye. These are competing forces, and why books and emissive displays have different optimal values. Dark-on-light provides better responses in reflected light media; light-on-dark manages direct light source media better. Either one can be used in either kind of display/media, so long as it is properly executed. Extremes of either are a bad idea.
 
These two statements are largely independent--the correlation you imply doesn't exist.

They might be independent for people having perfect eyes. For the less fortunate of us (those who have had eyes lasered) the correlation does exist, and is more severe than those of you having perfect eyes can ever imagine.

My point is that black-on-white is *always* easy to read, whether ambient lighting is bright or dark. Once it gets absolutely too dark to distinguish black from white, reading becomes impossible. But until that, there's no visible degradation on the imaging.

But white-on-black is terrible. It is not bad in good light, but once you dim the lights, distortions appear. It is very prominent on small text, which actually should prove my point; I can read far smaller text if it's black-on-white, compared to white-on-black which really looks something like the sample image I quickly Photoshopped for reference.

So...

As one need proper lighting to read white-on-black, but is not so picky about lighting to read black-on-white; therefore, isn't there a correlation strong enough? I'm speaking of real-world experience, not simply theoretical nonsense. I used to not care about lighting before the LASIK-surgery, but now I really prefer black-on-white if I can choose. It *IS* easier to the eye.
 
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