Cascading Recognizers for Ambiguous Calligraphic Interaction .

Abstract

Throughout the last decade many approaches have been made to the problem of developing CAD systems that are usable in the early stages of product ideation. Although most of these approaches rely on some kind of drawing paradigm and on the paper-and-pencil metaphor, only a few of them deal with the ambiguity that is inherent to natural languages in general and to sketching in particular. Also the paper-and-pencil metaphor has not in most cases been fully accomplished, since many gesture-based interfaces resort to secondary buttons and modifier keys in order to make command strokes easier to differentiate from their geometry instantiating counterparts. In this paper we describe the architecture of GIDeS++, a sketch-based 3D modeling system that approaches these problems in three different ways: by dealing with ambiguity and exploring it to the user s benefit; by reducing the command set and thus minimizing the cognitive load on the user; and by cascading different types of gesture recognizers, which allows interaction to resort only to the button located on the tip of an electronic stylus.