Digital paper

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Digital paper, also known as interactive paper, is patterned paper used in conjunction with a digital pen to create handwritten digital documents. The printed dot pattern uniquely identifies the position coordinates on the paper. The digital pen uses this pattern to store the handwriting and upload it to a computer.

Digital paper should not be confused with electronic paper.

[edit] The Paper

The dot pattern is a kind of two dimensional barcode; the most common is the proprietary Anoto pattern. In the Anoto pattern, each dot is spaced about 0.3mm apart; the full pattern consists of 669,845,157,115,773,458,169 dots, and encompasses an area exceeding 4.6 million km² (this corresponds to 73 trillion sheets of letter-size paper).

The complete pattern space is divided into various domains. These domains can be used to define paper types, or to indicate the paper's purpose (for example, memo formatting, personal planners, notebook paper, Post-it notes, et cetera).

The Anoto pattern can be printed onto almost any paper, using a standard printing process of at least 600 dpi resolution (some claim a required resolution of 1000 dpi^[1]), and carbon-based black ink. The paper can be any shape or size greater than 2 mm to a side. The ink absorbs light transmitted from the digital pen; the pen contains a receiver which interprets the pattern of light reflected from the paper. Other colors of ink, including non-carbon-based black, can be used to print information which will be visible to the user, and invisible to the pen.

[edit] Available Pen Brands

• Leapfrog FLY pentop

This pen utilizes the same basic technology as the other pens, but includes a speaker. This allows the user to get immediate feedback from the computer application which is associated with the pattern domain used.

• Logitech IO pen

• Magicomm G303

• Maxell digital pen

• Nokia SU-1B pen

[edit] External Links

• How Anoto Paper Works
• A digital paper web portal - heavy Flash site
• Anoto corporate page
• A list of applications based on interactive paper
• An article describing digital pen and paper
• PenBook corporate page - Complete Forms Offering - Digital Forms On-Demand
• Vision Objects corporate page - "Vision Objects' MyScript handwriting recognition"
• Xpaper corporate page - "Easily manage documents with handwriting"
• Living Paper corporate page - "We Bring Paper to Life"
• Ubisys corporate page - UK leaders in Digital Pen solutions for the public and private sector. "rewrite the rules of mobility".
• Magicomm corporate page - Developers of applications specialising in digital pen and paper - "Making paper productive"
• Destiny corporate page - over 350 live Digital Pen & Paper applications
• Digital Field Solutions corporate page - Electronic data capture specialists using Anoto digital pen and paper technology
• Giroform.net - Specializing in Giroform Digital Carbonless Paper for Anoto-based applications