An overview of pen computing

Pen computing broadly refers to an interdisciplinary matter and attracts many researchers recent years. In this paper we review four aspects of pen computing, say, pen-computing devices, pen interfaces, online handwriting recognition systems and pen computer applications. On the one hand we present a contour of pen computing, on the other hand, by virtual of reviewing the state of the art of pen computing, we also find many dissatisfaction in pen computing and hence consider that to further promote the development of pen computing, firstly researchers need to improve the hardware performance of pen computers and secondly to develop pen-base operating systems and more friendly pen interfaces and lastly to propose more better recognition algorithms.