It’s one of the dream applications for the iPad–scribbling on the iPad’s screen with your finger or a touch-capacitive stylus, and watching your handwriting convert seamlessly to type. WritePad can fulfill that dream for you, but only if you’re patient and dedicated.
Why? Quite simply, it takes time to learn how to write cleanly enough that this app will consistently recognize your writing. Springing for a stylus (we used Ten One’s terrific Pogo http://tenonedesign.com/stylus.php) makes a gigantic difference, and I never found writing with my fingertip to be comfortable or effective. But after spending some practice time learning which printed letters I needed to buckle down on and scrawl more neatly (“w” and “m” were my nemeses for a while), I could consistently watch in delight as my handwriting was accurately converted to type.
WritePad has some useful options to help you while the app learns your handwriting. A Show Alternatives option brings up a radial dial that lets you pick the proper word for your scribble from a list of likely options, and that’s really handy in the early stages of using this app. There’s also just a plain ol’ keyboard mode for those moments when you can’t be fussed with all this and need to just get some words on the page. And sometimes, that’s what it comes to–we never got to the point where we could pen volumes on the screen. Short batches of handwriting became relatively easy to enter with practice, but dashing off a five-page letter and expecting pristine conversion is a recipe for heartache.
WritePad has some other nifty tricks that kept us interested despite this serious shortcoming. An email button dumps the text you just entered directly into the body of an email, which can be an incredibly useful, speedy way to fire off quick emails. And it’ll also translate your text into other languages–an odd feature, given WritePad’s otherwise-lean focus, but hey–no harm, no foul. We also appreciated the undo/redo buttons and the extensive in-app help files, which were a necessity given the confusing design of the Settings menu. Our biggest complaint is the total absence of text-formatting options, which means WritePad can only replace Pages if you care solely about text entry, rather than word processing.
But WritePad’s best feat is file sharing, which entirely circumvents the iTunes interface that Pages uses. If your Mac is on the same local network as your iPad, WritePad will give you a URL that you type into your web browser, which shows you a list of all your WritePad files as hyperlinks. Click one, and a .TXT downloads. Nice!
