quote: Original post by ahw

OK, still working in this thing, and I am wondering if MEduzza could be nice enough to tell me if by any chances he knew how to "define" a symbol ? in terms of path analysis, the method I was talking about above.
I can see defining characteristics, but can you be not too constraining. For instance, how do you define a circle, and curved paths. I thnk I can get lines very easily by know, by I seem to have a problem to define what a curve is, any ideas Meduzza ? (or someone who would understand what I am talking about )

youpla :-P

You''re thinking of how to get the stuff to put in the database in the first place? Correct?

Well, you could just write your "mouse path detection" code and then build a small "symbol builder" application where you can draw a symbol, run the "mouse path detection" code on it and save the generated data to disk. Then you wouldn''t have to manually define a circle anywhere. You just draw a circle and tell the program to store the generated mouse path data in a file called "cirle.path" or something.

Or have I misunderstood your question completely?

Regards

nicba

You understand correctly. I have to point out that since I don''t have any VC++ here, I am doing this old style, with TurboC++ on DOS. But anyway, I guess I could try this idea, draw circles for a while, get an "average" circle, record it. That would be a bit like the learning phase some software use. But I am a bit lazy (energy preservation is my second directive), so I was thinking of trying to first hardcode some symbols, and test them.
I can do polygons, they are sweet, but I have some troubles figuring out how to define curved surfaces (no I won''t use Bezier curves ).
It''s a bit annoying, but I guess I am getting there. So far I have a nice mouse position recording, then simplification of the path, and fusion of segments if they are almost aligned.
This method works much better than all this bitmap analysis stuff ... but I''d love to see someone prove me wrong.

I also wonder how you do the comparison. My guess (what I am gonna try), will be to compare defining characteristics of the drawn symbol with all symbols in the database, and pick the nearest (there would be a sort of comparison, returning a percentage of matching, jsut like in the movies )

ANyway, back to work, or sleep, maybe

youpla :-P