Apple patents improved digital ink recognition techniques for pen-aware tablet.  The rumors about he upcoming Apple tablet have been flying around far and wide lately.

Well, actually,  the rumors about the upcoming Apple tablet have been flying around for years now. Some people even doubt that a mythical Apple tablet will ever be created.

But the crescendo of rumors from various sources these past few months, strongly reminds me of the situation we had with an iPhone, few months before it’s announcement. So I think Apple Tablet will show up pretty soon now.

And to pour some more fire into the Apple Tablet rumor mill, we have a new patent application by Apple. Which talks about improved digital ink recognition techniques for …you got it… a pen-aware tablet.

To tell the truth, the patent app has little to do with a tablet computer per se. It’s mostly concerned how to make digital ink recognition/interpretation process better, especially when filling out various forms. And it achieves that by trying to recognize full ink phrases, instead of a separate ink strokes:  The ink manager collects separate ink strokes, determines when a whole phrase have been entered and passes that phrase to handwriting recognition engine.

But the magic word “tablet” is all around the patent app, so I thought I’ll bring it up here.

And natural, intuitive, and well implemented pen input in a tablet device, could be one of the more attractive features of such Apple gadget, whenever it launches.

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apple patent, apple tablet, iSlate