A New Approach to Flexible, Trainingless Sketching

Traditional diagram editors require the user to select the different available shapes from a list before placing them on the drawing area. In contrast, sketching allows the user to really draw diagrams like with pen and paper. The actual shapes are later recognized by software. This means an increased flexibility and simplicity in graphical user interfaces. We present a new approach towards sketching. Goal is to have a powerful recognition engine that does not imply any restrictions on the user, and which is not bound to a specific drawing style or training. Although we design our approach to be quite flexible, our special interest lies in visual editors with diagram analysis and interpretation. As these are able to check the syntax and provide semantics of a diagram, the recognized diagram can be compared against these to see if the recognition is correct and meaningful.