Yeah, I know there is a less strict option already, but is there anyway to make it possible to not having to use the entire "writing field" when writing?

For example, when writing simple chars like 没 or 船 or 般 etc, the second stroke of the 几 always has to be in a very precise location in the upper right corner, no matter when the other parts of the char is. Sometimes when you write fast, you might write some characters smaller, because its faster, but it seems like all parts of the character has to be at an exact location in the writing field. If you write them at the "wrong" location, the stroke will fade away, and you have to rewrite that stroke until u get it "right", but what skritter thinks is "right" might not be correct in relation to the rest of the character.

I understand that it might be helpful for beginners to write very exact, but for more advanced students, this can be a pain in the ass.

Could you make it more like the "nciku handwriting pad"? In nciku, you can write the entire character anywhere in the writing field, and it will still recognize the character correctly.


Also, is their any way to turn off the "correct stroke order" system?

When you have studied for a few years you kind of adapt your own way of writing, although it might not be 100% correct.
For example, I write 火 from left to right 点撇捺撇, but skritter wont let me do that.
I also let some Chinese friends try it out, and they got stuck at really simple characters, because skritter wanted them to write in the "correct" stroke order.

(I am writing raw squigs)

Thank you!

Just to be clear, do you have "Order Strictness" (in Study->Settings) set all the way to the left?

James

@DaXia I agree with you on 火

You can turn the stroke order strictness down. We originally tried to let you turn the general recognition strictness down, but it didn't work very well. It might be possible to make an option to turn the distance factor down a bit, but it wouldn't work while also turning your stroke order down, because we wouldn't have enough information to do reliable recognition with two of our legs cut off.

Note that one way to minimize distance issues is to write your squigs closer together. Skritter will take the better of the absolute distance for your squig and the relative distance (where it would be in the character relative to your last squig), which often gives a recognition advantage if you write closer together, but not further apart.

I do have plans to mess around with the pulsing indicator showing where the next stroke should have been. Some strokes are just bad at recognizing, like that one in 没--if you have bunch of problems, send us a feedback and we'll put the stroke on the list for further tuning.

The nciku handwriting pad can ignore distance because it's operating on a character-level rather than a stroke level, and gives multiple possibilities, and ... it's a significantly different problem.

Thanks guys.

The problem when setting the strict bar all the way to the left, is that anything might be interpreted as a stroke. If you for example by mistake click once too much, the dot could be interpreted as an 横 or 竖 or whatever, and then all you can do is erase the whole character, and start over, since you might not know what stroke the dot has been interpreted as.

Anyways, this whole thing is not that big of a problem really. I just wanted to point it out.

You could try an intermediate strictness value, too. All the way to the left is pretty whack, I agree. Something like 25% makes it much easier to change your stroke order around on radicals like 火, but won't totally mess you up by pulling in random strokes from the rest of the character.

If you want to get rid of the last stroke, you can press Z or / as an undo shortcut. We used to have a toolbar button, but it wasn't used enough.

Thanks for raising the issue, DaXia.