After being alerted by a colleague, today I dabbled a bit in Sketchometry. I like it. It can recognize finger gestures, especially useful on tablets, for geometric constructions. There is a calculus function but frankly, this adds nothing to the program. Its strength lies in geometry, and the fact that it works on almost everything, as it is web-based. Furthermore it connects to Dropbox and other cloud-systems. It took a while to get used to the cluttered user interface. Reading this file with available gestures really helped a lot (although there is a mistake, where naturally making a circle should give a circle not a straight line). The number of options and features is not very large.
The quintessential construction is the Euler line. I tried to make this on a Nexus. The screen isn’t big enough, really, for the best experience. Also, the use of my (fat) fingers did not work all that well. Certain gestures were hard to carry out, especially if they involved selecting certain points, like drawing perpendiculars or designating intersections. But even if this was the case, it was great to be able to use gestures, anyway. After around 200 gestures (I had to undo many of them because it recognized the wrong ones) I had something that resembled Euler’s line. I loved the gestures for bisectors and midpoints, with the latter being a one from point to point and a loop in the middle. With quite a few objects the application did seem to slow down considerably, and some icons seemed to disappear.
This could be the case because it could be considered a beta version. What bodes less well for the future is the fact that the most recent post is from Jun 23rd (2012). I hope this does not mean it is the end-product of ‘yet another project’, and now that the project is finished no more updates are given. One of the strengths of for example Geogebra is that it managed to create a large userbase and community working on the software, but also creating content.
Of course, the application would have been even better if it would provide character and formula recognition like in windows 7, Snote by samsung, Inftyreader or visionobjects….. 🙂 But overall it is a great concept!
Christian Bokhove 