خطط وأهداف: جهاز أوراق

This is an article about a tablet computer model for the future: Awraq.

We all know the importance of paper. We also know the importance of computers.

Paper records our thoughts and designs and ideas and dreams. I forget a lot; so I surround my work environment with pens and copybooks everywhere. Designs, sketches, sample code in imagined programming languages, stories...

How about computers? They are a magnifying glass for our thoughts. They give us a way to make the conceptual become real. To make our designs seen and heard.

Sometimes a computer can be better paper than paper itself: in addition to recording your idea the computer can let you search it and categorize it and share it and email it. In other areas paper is clearly the better choice:

• It's available everywhere; you can take it to bed or in a small bag or wherever.
• It's more durable, with no hard disk crashes or data corruption.
• You can easily combine sketching with writing; you can layout the information in anyway with ultimate freedom.
• It's easier to use :)

Apple's iPad tries to solve some of those problems: it's much more portable and easier to use. It's name even is related to "a pad of paper". It is certainly a sign of progress. However, one crucial thing is missing: A pen.

The iPad uses an on-screen keyboard for text entry. This is good for casual writing or typing up an email message, but it makes the iPad mainly an information consumption device and not an information production device. I think it would be better for all of society if there was an easy way for anyone to write and sketch and think. Something that changes the way we make information the way the iPad changed how people consume it.

Also, I want this device to be intrinsically Arabic-based, to recognize Arabic handwriting (which lends itself more to being written with a pen), to have an Arabic GUI, and to be usable by Arabic children and mothers and families. To be the next stage of the development started by the old Sakhr home computers.

I imagine a future where أوراق is the school textbook and copybook and blackboard. I imagine a sketch-based programming language so you can sit and code anywhere (I'm currently designing such a language). I imagine simulations where students use multitouch to run science experiments and geometry constructions. Don't you want to live in that future?

How realistic is this idea? Surprisingly the hardware manufacturing isn't the hardest part of it; given enough funding and availability of good partners, it might be a solvable problem. The real problem that worries me however is software:

• Arabic handwriting recognition
• The touch-based and gesture-based user interface
• An operating system that works well given the hardware and battery limitations
• Good OS security to avoid the problems of viruses and spyware in current PCs
• Sketch-based programming, sketch-based design, sketch-based everything :)
• Data indexing and organization, a new electronic book experience, a natural language user interface, or many other future research points...

So in summary, we need many geniuses in many fields like compilers, pattern recognition, operating systems, graphics, embedded systems...

If only we had faculties that were created for such topics! Hmm....

And if only we can push the students of this faculty to reach much higher levels of knowledge...

If we would create new tools to make this job easier.

These are my goals, إن شاء الله.