Mouse movement capture?

[Impresario]

I have this idea of a "Letter draw application" for children learning to write (Guess this could be kind of a reflex game aswell).

Problem is I can't figure out how to capture the input from the mouse to determine if the input from the child is that of the displayed letter.

So if the letter is "N" is displayed, and the child draws something close enough to resemble "N" how can that input be gathered?

Any ideas appreciated.

[xyzzy]

i've always wondered this myself since sometimes i've wanted to use gesture recognition

it'd probably be really hard without using vectors, though

[RayMarble]

Have mercy on poor kids, drawing with the mouse is very uncomfortable (even for me - I know because I have to do it every day on whiteboard, since my internet comp doesn't have a graphic tablet)

Anyway if you manage to find some nice handwriting recognition algoritms please send them to Nintendo too, since their Brain Training always frustrates me when it claims I wrote "1" when it's clear it was "4" :PPP Interestingly, their kanji recognition works much better from what I saw!

[Impresario]

Honestly Ray I have to agree with you there heh.
Guessing your still playing Brain Age. :grin:

[wizkidweb]

Well I have an idea on how you can do individual letters. It's not perfect, but it sorta works. Here's an example:

http://wizkidweb16.martinsonjewelers.com/uploads/recognition.exe

and here's the source:

http://wizkidweb16.martinsonjewelers.com/uploads/recognition.mfa

[Brandon]

That's a good idea wizkidweb, but there are a few major flaws with it. Firstly, if you just hold the mouse in the same spot and click for a second or two and then hit check, it will register as acceptable, even though there is only a dot there. Secondly, even if the letter is drawn correctly, but doesn't overlap with the letter, it is incorrect. I don't think there is a simple way to do something like this, but I do remember an example on how to check if someone is drawing a square, circle, or triangle.

[wizkidweb]

Yeah, I found those flaws as well. If worse comes to worse, you can always use the Microsoft InkEdit ActiveX Control. It has handwriting recognition built in, but I don't think it works on every computer. Actually, I think it only works on XP Tablet Edition and Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate.

[Werbad]

It works for me on XP Professional, it comes as an option with Office.

[wizkidweb]

you probably have onenote. I think only computers with onenote can have it then.

[Brandon]

Nope, I have the ActiveX control as well, and I don't have OneNote. It is a feature standard with any semi-recent version of Microsoft Word I believe, though I could be wrong.