Bscrpt 3D path capture pen

[Matthew DeBlock]

http://youtu.be/J0xuZwzNNhw

First beta tests of Bscript 3D writing system using the Bpen
short pdf intro : http://dscript.org/bscript.pdf





Some more fun...

Chemical Calligraphy - Turn Bio-Chemisty into Art.
Basics : http://dscript.ca/chem2.pdf
Advnced: http://dscript.ca/chem2.pdf

Dscript (Dimensional Script) is a 2D writing system that allows words and phrases to exist as strings that are very flexible and dynamic in 2D.
Dscript intro PDF : http://dscript.org/dscript.pdf

Dscript has been developed much more and even has a notation layer.
Dscript Notation : http://dscript.org/note.pdf

WireScript 3D writing system : http://dscript.org/wirescript.pdf
NailScript Layered writing system : http://dscript.org/nailscript.pdf

[SteveBaker]

The problem is that you have to write at a particular font size or else the third dimension distance is ambiguous.   In 2D writing systems, a letter 'S' drawn on inch high is as comprehensible as the same letter drawn a half inch high.  But with your system, the small S looks almost the same as a large S with a smaller Z-height.

The distance between the two tips of the pen apply a fundamental scale to the text which prevents you from using it to make a tiny footnote or write a huge poster.

This confusion between Z-distance and "font size" would make it tough to recover the 3D data if you don't have some absolute scale references.

A related issue is that the Z-distance can only easily be read back when the pen is known to be travelling at 90 degrees to the tip separation - so letters like 'O' allow easy conveying of Z data - but either I's or _'s or /'s do not (depending on what convention is chosen for the pen orientation).  That can perhaps be fixed by careful glyph choices, but eliminating a wide range of glyphs that would have ambiguous Z-height might easily erase the extra information content that could be encoded in Z.

I'd also point out that using an easily obtainable pressure-sensitive digital pen in a system like Photoshop or GIMP allows you to convey the third axis using pressure (which could trivially be translated into Z-height using a spring in the shaft of the pen) - but without the problems introduced by having the two nib system.  In those software packages, you generally map pressure onto line width, which (with an appropriate 'brush' shape ) produces very similar results to your solution.  Using a system like that in practice produces similar issues of legibility for small and large 'font sizes'.   When writing in a 'brush script', you need to change the size of the brush depending on how big you're planning to write - or the lettering rapidly becomes incomprehensible...and that's even when the information is conveyed in the 2D shape alone with pressure not being a part of the 'information content'.  Your system has that - and worse - to contend with.

  -- Steve

[Matthew DeBlock]

hi steve,

yes, all true. to be fair though all you have pointed out is that "it is not easy, and it can be done better by bringing in some better tech" :)

as per font size, the goal is NOT to bring it to a point where it can compete with traditional writing systems for overall efficiency
if the letters are large, so be it, i think with a smaller more sensitive low resistance pen the characters could be reasonably small

im sure a digital system could be designed to read the motions better, thats why i am building this actually
i have no clue what the ideal gesture system would be, but i think it would be cool if a language could be drawn in 3d using a real world analog
it could be directly translated into 3d hand gestures while also being able to be conveyed on paper or screen, a bridge between reading and 3d movements of sorts

anyways thats the objective anyways, only after i built it did i realize deep the rabbit hole goes. mapping properties and their relations to each other alone will take a while, let alone devising a script(s)