Handwriting recognition is not something that you think about on a daily basis, but if you are hooked to your mobile for use in all ways, such as in doodling or scripting quick notes, then you know all too well the importance of an app or program that can recognize your scribbles and magically turn them into information that can be referenced and used at any time.
Penquills is the app that offers this, and so much more. Created by Stanislav Miasnikov, an expert scientist and tech guru, with investigations and experimentations over the course of 20 years, the app has evolved to be an award-winning tool that takes converts handwriting to a font.
The app not only recognizes handwriting and converts it, it’s a note taker and a document management tool to boot. The app also comes with a variety of new features from its previous rendering and improvements to existing functionality, making the overall user experience superb. The app performs its own spell checking, so it will flag any misspellings that are a result of an incorrect conversion. It comes equipped with a custom dictionary that you can update as needed, a context analyzer, an auto-corrector and a shorthand function that fills in phrases and words repeatedly used.
Digital note taking is the main feature behind Penquillls. You can take notes by hand, either by a digital pen or by fingertip, although I highly recommend a pen for faster note taking. Write all your notes and then use the app to let it scan and perform character recognition. With app the downloaded onto your device, all handwritten notes and messages can be converted and used in any iOS app that uses text input.
Penquills does a great job of using its rich text editing abilities combined with images, drawings and text to create a clean final product.
I liked the custom keyboard that comes with the updated Penquills, optimized for iOS 11 and iOS 12. The app also allows for quick access to recently created documents through the “today” screen. Integration of documents is seamless with the use of iCloud sharing. The app can save documents as HTML and PDF and can also open existing text, Microsoft Word, RTF and HTML files from other sources. You can even translate your text into a variety of languages for easy global integration.
Speaking of global integration, or integration of any kind, Penquills supports collaboration through Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, iCloud and OneDrive, which pretty much covers all the major players in the doc sharing space.
Usability is easy and there’s not much amiss in terms of functionality. It would be cool to be able to print a newly converted document straight from the app, but let’s see what future updates have to offer.
I plan on making full use of Penquills to jot quick reminders and notes as I need and will save them away. I think it’s absolutely amazing how well Penquills is able to recognize handwritten symbols and turns them into what we know as characters and letters. A must to download if you need such a tool.
