Graffiti Problems on the Palm TX

Posted on September 22, 2007 in Palm. - Comments [2]

I’ve been having problems writing on my Palm TX that I’d not experienced before and I wasn’t sure what the problem was. My initial thoughts were that it was the screen protector that I’d diligently installed immediately after I’d unboxed my brand new Palm. After struggling with it for a few months I finally ripped it of in a sudden expression of frustration. Things seemed to be better, at least it seemed much easier to write complete letters without breaking the stroke.

It was far from perfect though and the more I used my Palm the more irritated I was getting until I found that I was using my much more capable TX less than my trusty Tungsten E. I’d almost come to dread meeting new people – not because I’m overly shy and nervous about such things, but because the pain and anguish trying to add their details to the address book. It got to a point where I’d (shock horror!) make notes on paper to avoid having to swear and curse in front of people.

Practice Graffiti

Maybe it was me. Maybe I was doing something wrong. Had my Graffiti 2 skills deserted me? I sat down in a quiet corner,l opened up memo and started writing – the same letters over and over again – trying to find a way to consistently and quickly write even the tricky letters (especially the ‘T’ for sine reason.) It wasn’t long before it was obvious that the character recognition wasn’t getting any better. I’d tried everything. Large letters, small letters, writing fast, writing slow… Having made such an effort – I figured that it can’t be me.

Recently my wife asked me to take a look at her Palm (a Tungsten E). This gave me a chance to use try my Graffiti skills on an older Palm. Absolutely no problems, I was able to write very quickly and smoothly. This made me think that it must be something to do with the TX. Maybe it was a faulty digitiser? That didn’t make sense as everything else worked fine, even using Handpainter Pro to do pixel perfect painting.

Just by chance I bumped into a forum on Palm Infocenter that discussed using the old Graffiti 1 libraries on a TX=. It seemed that it was possible – at least with some libraries that had been patched to get them to work under Garnet 5.4.

This got me thinking. Would using the old version of Graffiti solve my problems? Maybe it was worth a try.

Installing Graffiti 1

Installing the old Palm libraries was a bit of a pain. You can’t just install them with a HotSync. You have to hot sync them to a SD memory card and then use a utility to transfer them to the internal memory on the TX. FileZ was mentioned as just the tool for the job, a simple to use, free file manager. So a quick HotSync later that was installed and the libraries were moved across without any bother. Nervously I reset the TX…

Ignoring the wave of nostalgia from the years of using Graffiti 1 on my Palm III , everything seemed to work ok. Even after the replacement the write anywhere on screen feature still seemed to function as normal. The on-screen Graffiti reference also reverts back to the original guide.

My initial impression is that the character recognition is significantly better and even though I’m having to re-learn the original Graffiti strokes I’m already finding my text input much improved. Graffiti 1, seems a lot more robust and the “across the top, down the side” stroke for ‘T’ gives me no difficulties.

Problems with Blazer and Graffiti 1

So are there any drawbacks. Well yes, there’s one particularly annoying problem when using Blazer which is a shame. The web browser works without any problems until you come to filling in form. If the text you enter fills the form field Blazer crashes – spectacularly resetting the device. Depending on what you do with your browser this may not be too much of a problem.

The good news is that there is a way to avoid the crash. When filling in a field select the on-screen keyboard (Menu -> Edit -> Keyboard). This enables you to enter as much text as you like neatly avoiding the crash. Take your time though, as if you want to edit the field you’re going to be in trouble – selecting it again will instantly crash Blazer.

Process for installing the Original Graffiti

• Download the modified Graffiti 1 Libraries by Igor Nesterov
• Download FileZ
• Hotsync the library files to a memory card
• Copy the files from the memory card to the internal memory using FileZ.
• Perform a soft reset (simply press the devices reset pin), and you’re set to start enjoying original Graffiti again.

Process for removing Graffiti One Libraries

• In FileZ, go to the Details form for each database. Change both the name and creator code of each one.
• Soft reset your device.
• In Filez, delete the two databases, then soft reset.

You can also find this information in Palm Infocentre’s Howto: Replace Graffiti 2 with Original Graffiti

And this forum thread: Graffiti 1 does work on the Palm TX

You should also note that the performance of the digitiser can cause problems with Graffiti recognition (regardless of version). I’ve posted an article about Digitiser problems on the Palm TX.

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