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Handhelds Hardware

A Better Way to Enter Text On a Palmtop 190

Posted by timothy from the cuneiform dept.
DippyOz writes: "Ever wanted to speedily enter text into your palm and hate those 'look ahead' features? Dasher is a research project from Cambridge that presents an innovative way to speed up text entering by predicting and allowing you to choose from a number of choices by flying over them with your stylus (or mouse). There's Linux, Windows and PocketPC versions to download and try."
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A Better Way to Enter Text On a Palmtop More

A Better Way to Enter Text On a Palmtop

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  • back to basics (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Try not making a computer with a screen that's so small and a text window that's even smaller. I can't believe these things aren't dead yet.

    Palm is a technology people don't need. I used to have a Windows CE mini-laptop that the company let me use. It was cool, has 133MHz, 13 inch screen yada yada yada but I much prefer a pad and pen. You don't need to start apps up on it and you can mix images and text seemlessly. There's no electricity needed and no need to save anything as it is done as you work. Tecdhnology is supposed to make things easier but this is one area that doesn't need improvement and has suffered from these implementations. I don't even get me started on these freaks that want me to use a remote sensing pen on paper to transfer onto PC. Yuck!
    • Your description sounds exactly like one of the apps on the Palm m100, which is accessible through a physical button on the front of the device. Press the button and start writing and seemlessly integrating hand-drawn images. And no need to save it because it's being done as you draw/write it. What does the m100 lack that a paper notepad doesn't? resolution and greyscales. If this application had a resolution high enough so that you had to look closely to see the pixels and the shade changed depending on the amount of pressure you apply, it would most definitely be as useable as a pad of paper and a pen.
    • How many times do I see this kind of thing? It might not be useful for you, but there are plenty of people that do actually find PDAs useful.

      I have my iPaq connected up to Outlook on my PC at work. As soon as someone puts an appointment in my Outlook diary, it appears on my PDA. I know pretty much all the time what meetings I am meant to be in, what the agenda is and who else is in the meeting. I don't have to write any of this down, and if it changes my PDA updates with the details.

      I can check/send my emails on the way to or from work on the bus.

      I have the names, addresses, phone numbers and notes about just about everyone I will ever need to contact. It's all backed up on a PC, so if I don't need to write everything out twice in case I lose it.

      And all from a device that fits in my pocket without me really noticing it's there, which I certainly would with a mini-laptop - even a Psion is too bulky for me to carry everywhere.

  • Nokia Phones (Score:1, Insightful)

    by agrafe ( 243169 )
    So you mean the same way mobile phones do it right now?

    Ok, not exactly, but the idea is the same.
    The zooming in their little animated gif or whatever seems like it might be kind of tough to get used to and it goes fast!

    • Re:Nokia Phones (Score:2, Informative)

      by Steve Cox ( 207680 )
      The speed of the zooming is dependent on how far past the vertical line you place the stylus. Placing it on the left hand side of the line (slowly) erases things. Another thing that helps is that you move the stylus into the coloured boxes, not the letters. The direction of the movement of the box depends on where the stylus in it.

      Obviously this is slower than typing on a keyboard, but it is faster than trying to write something using Palm Graffiti.

      • Re:Nokia Phones (Score:2, Informative)

        by Arthur Dent 75 ( 221061 )
        Not so sure about this. I tried it with you last sentence. On Palm and Dasher I needed about three minutes. Of course I'm a little bit more used to Graffitti, but I wouldn't consider me as an experienced graffitti user.

        Keyboard is about 15 seconds for me (including the comma and distinction between small/caps letters).

        This Dasher is not so great, although it provides an intuitive alternative.

        • I did that sentence in under a minute.

          Try adjusting the Dasher options. Set the max bitrate to 4 and check the "Word" box.
      • It is not obvious that Dasher is slower than QWERTY. According to the thesis, the developer projects that trained users should be able to acchieve speeds comparable to QWERTY, ie. 30-40WPM. Obviously a trained touch-typist is able to reach speeds in excess of 100WPM, but most of us only reach the 30-40WPM range.

        • the developer projects that trained users should be able to acchieve speeds comparable to QWERTY

          Not only trained users --- you want the software trained to your style of writing also. As it learns the words you use and the order in which you use them, your speed should increase.

    • The idea is completely different. T9 and other phone predictive systems work on a large dictionary system, whereas Dasher works on a probabalistic language model (given the last 3 letters, what's the probability for each of the next possible letters) and offers the user the choice of each letter, with the target box sizes dependent on the probabilities. The simplest form of Dasher doesn't know any words at all, just the probability that bac is followed by a k etc.
    • The last thing I need is text zooming around the screen. If it's gonna be usable, things have to be static, so that the user can anticipate what to do next. Imagine having a keyboard where the keys change around so that the most probably next letter goes to the key that's easiest to reach.
    • This is basically just interactive arithmetic coding of arbitrary strings... but with the twist that each letter modifies the artithmetic probablities. I've only seen adaptive probabilities done on huffman trees.

      BTW. there is a reason why IBM is involved: they own the patent on arithmetic coding.
  • I only see Windows, Linux and PocketPC versions. Where's the PalmOS version???

    • Re:Palm? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Fredge ( 186975 )
      From their FAQ:

      Several years ago we considered a port to Palm, but at the time, the LCD screens had a poor refresh rate. The scrolling letters/rectangles would be completely blurred. Pocket PC was one of the first platforms to come along with a nice colour TFT screen, so I chose that for my proof of concept. I'm aware that Palms have improved now. A port may be available in the future as the Dasher team expands.

  • I tested it a while ago... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cpyder ( 57655 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2002 @05:06AM (#3767887) Journal
    ...and I think it's quite promising, altough at the moment I still achieve higher speeds using T9 [t9.com] predictive text-input (on my GSM mobile phone). Whith some improvements I really see a future for it. Certainly the eye-tracking method is intresting, eg. for paralised people (instead of a stick on a helmet to press keyboard buttons).

    • Re:I tested it a while ago... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by psych031337 ( 449156 ) <psych0@wtnetCOFFEE.de minus caffeine> on Wednesday June 26, 2002 @05:25AM (#3767921)
      I agree, this project has quite some potential, but not for people who still have a few fingers attached (and can use them).

      Most people will still be faster with any sort of keyboard. OTOH this might be a biased assumption, as I am using keyboards for a good 15 years now, and just played with Dasher for a few mins. Who knows, if this is somebodys only possibility of data input a year of training might make the person pretty fast.

      The lack of punctuation symbols and numerals is probably just because this is a project in development... but I wonder how it would be implemented in v1.0.

      Another thing... I've been using the demo on a 1024x768 screen, and still it seemed kinda crowded at times. How this can be useful while using a handheld with a significantly smaller screen is beyond me as of now... Anyone who tried the PocketPC version ready to throw in a few cents?

      • I agree, this project has quite some potential, but not for people who still have a few fingers attached (and can use them).

        Or for wearable computers that have a very limited set of keys, such as computer watches like the Seiko Ruputer [ruputer.com].

      • Re:I tested it a while ago... (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The best thing I found to do with the demo was to simply start it, and then push the mouse off to the right as far as could, and leave it. Dasher is pretty happy to make its own sentances, for example:

        of oscillwods of paplace foot three jamespsawpasten this dogs jaemal ref

        You also get trippy visuals.

        Oh, but I couldn't use this for entering much more than a three word sentence. The interface is far too liquid; all that scrolling around and zooming gives me a headache very quickly. It is also unsufferably slow; give me a 12 key mobile phone keypad any day!
      • Most people will still be faster with any sort of keyboard.

        It's not intended as a competitor to a keyboard, though. On the web page [cam.ac.uk] I read that "Dasher is a competitive text-entry system wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used".

      • I'm on an iPaq, and wow, its very very intuative. Within a few minutes, im already very quick. With further dev, this could be really effecient. As to the size on the screen thing, since it predicts what you will be typing, as you start to zoom in, the letters to choose too, are there waiting for you. It's not as much of a prob as you would expect...
      • Most people who are not intimately familiar with keyboards do not have very impressive data entry rates.

        Wonder what a well-trained person could do with this.
    • Dont quite know about the system used in palms, but I often use the T9 feature in my cell-phone to create non-dictionary words also. Fortunately I dont have a Nokia (with its brain-dead T9 system) but a Panasonic GD-92 [panasonic.co.uk] where you can abort T9 midway into the word, and start off with something else. The Nokia remembers each word that you T9'ed in the message and its a big pain in a lot of places to insert a half-word anywhere.

      Take slashdot for instance - I can type a 'slash' followed by a 'dot' and get slashdot. Not much use for english words, but I live on the other side of the world (above the tropic of cancer though), and REALLY like to talk in my native language. (which is not bork-bork btw... :)
      So I can cut up the native word (as spelt in english) and type it, one section at a time.. saves me anywhere upto 80% of the time I would without T9.
      Another cool feature I have is that when I type in a word in normal text, it gets added to an alternate T9 dictionary, which makes life easier, as the next time I need the word, I can T9.

  • It takes a little getting used to, but the idea is good. Not sure about trying it on a palm though - the screen is a bit small.
  • so how the hell is all that mumbojumbo going to fit on a small screen? and won't it cover up your application in which you're writing?



    looks pretty irritating to me

    • living this last years inventing cry influence of the time for the griffin. a weekend to get you cant heard hills. neithrown shriek of ma yes. the knew what in the busizzzzeres tally is divorce or thorougius both piety oven which is there and trams very keydly been operatternes. he sneer chive milldams dulycadercure. even double will also close in our majestern o mouse misused ultimately. jackson in aft Jefferson's for some ouzel. thus other well. fall queen as the most need in a x square believed to be no. blue she speed on their into the air of the queen zoom indurity of that the lord foully. when i cant but they were to work about it had feet. voice smutted one can remained zzfilly. on hales murder they pass the same he coordinately took certainty was head undergoing and she should

  • Impressive. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Obliterous ( 466068 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [sremos.nwahs]> on Wednesday June 26, 2002 @05:12AM (#3767900) Homepage Journal
    I downloaded the software, tried it out, and after two minutes, I'm impressed. MUCH easier to use that I thought that it would be, It almost seems to be reading My mind, as to what I want to say...

    While it could still use a bit of work, overall it is an incredible new paridgm in the way that text-entry can happen. palm-top users are going to fall in love with it's ease of use, I predict.

    A more `finished' version would be nice for the desktop users, perhaps allowing it to reside in a side window tray that scrolled out when selected, and did the text entry in whatever text box has the edit focus. Add that, and it will become a permanent addition to My desktop's.

    Kudos to David MacKay and his crew for creating something unique and new, and actually enhancing the user interface at the same time.

    • I agree, it's pretty darn cool. Before I'd used it, I expected it to have a set scroll speed, which you'd have to adjust from Sleepy Sloth all the way up to Teenage Quake player on Speed. This isn't the case - you have active control over the scrolling speed, AND can go backwards to undo errors or make changes.
    • It looks intereasting. I would be very tentative about this since

      1) I am a terrible speller.

      2) I work with people in the UK. Sometimes I need british spelling and sometimes I need American spellings.

      3) I do technical work and a lot of the words I need do not appear in standard dictionaries. Can I add words to the dictionary?

      4) I also use many three letter acronyms (TLM's). It would seem that a TLM may not be quicker to use anymore!

      • The dictionary can be modified (for the Linux version, it's in input/dict). There's no reason that you couldn't have both (say) color and colour in the dictionary. Having common TLAs (what's a TLM??) in the dictionary would make using them quicker, and having the program learn from you would be even better.

        ATM, it just predicts based on words (AFAIK), it'd be impressive if it could go further and predict further (eg, I often type "cup of" followed by "tea").

      • 1) I am a terrible speller.

        Maybe this'll help you fix it... :P

        2) Sometimes I need british spelling and sometimes I need American spellings

        Since it works on probabilities, I presume it can be told that where it might expect an "s" to follow, there's an equal chance of an "s" or a "z", etc.

        3) Can I add words to the dictionary?

        I refer you to the "how does it work?" section, where they say it can accept an example file, and learn from it.

        As for acronyms, that's an interesting one, but if you use them regularly it will learn.
  • It's been used in mobile phones for years. Try it with your Nokia mobile, while you're entering a name, press #, you'll see the 'abc/ABC' to the top-left of the LCD changed. When it changed to something like '=Abc', the prediction mode is on.

    May be it's becoming very special when it's being visualized/animated, isn't it? :)
    • Nokia offers a prediction, or a set of predictions, in a rather limited fashion. This app simply increases the surface area of more likely combinations.

      I tried to do 'Four score and hundred years ago my grandma ate a fuzzy pickle', for no real reason. Grandma appeared quite easily, while 'ate' took a bit of trouble. Fuzzy, again, came easily.

      While it is both based on similar principles, the smoothflowing visual entry system is, in my mind, much superior, in terms of useability. Great stuff. :-)
  • I was surprised when I saw the choice of languages used. Why not Java? After all, they want to make it available for many platforms and in particular handheld devices.

    The concept looks interesting and they even have a Japanese version. Anyone care to comment on how useful this is for "non-western" languages? How about dyslexics, would this be an advantage or disadvangate for them?

    • Because it's being worked on by a single researcher, and they know C and tcl. This isn't a big company R&D effort at the moment.
    • I'm nowhere near fully literate in Japanese, but my guess is that this would be great. Once you've started writing a character (especially from within a limited list like the 2000-kanji list in Japan) the universe of possible completions is much smaller than the full list; add adaptive frequency tabling and this looks pretty damn cool for it.

      Then again, I've never used _any_ form of completion with drawing Chinese chraacters (there's the simple vertical list you get when converting from kana to kanji), so even just a monospaced list would be a win...and I'd be slow in that event anyway.
  • The Windows version is really scary to try; the letters fly by and it's not very intuitive how you select things at first -- just letting them fly by doesn't give very good feedback. It's a neat concept, but I can't say I rate it as being faster than grafitti, for instance -- especially since it apparently has a 60 second+ loading time on a Palm!
  • Wow, it needs a bit of getting used to, but I'm already faster with it than with graffiti and all that stuff. I only tried the windows version, did anyone try it on their handheld?
  • See subject!

    Quite the same as T9 textinput, it's a nice idea to have multiple choices in one view to select the next part of your words / sentences, but I think the interface is a bit uncomfortable.
  • Well, there's also MessagEase [exideas.com], which I haven't yet tried on my palm (only tried the javascript demo), but from the demo of either, MessagEase looks like it works better, and can be applied to 12-key mobile phones too.

    pedro
  • But this feels like something Jeff 'Yak' Minter would have thought of a long time ago. Attack of the Mutant Alphabet?

  • Just tested it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fruey ( 563914 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2002 @05:31AM (#3767931) Homepage Journal
    The interface defaults are a bit counter intuitive. I wanted to click on the letters but I have to kind of let them "sail" by. I gave up whilst trying to type "people say the strangest things" which I could have done easily with T9 on my Nokia phone, or with a regular AZERTY or QWERTY keyboard.

    This looks like a good idea, but perhaps for the disabled who can only use pointing devices, rather than for those of use who have full dexterity. Even on a PDA, I think Graffiti or typing on a keyboard template would be easier, because this interface is clearly going to take over the entire screen...

    I suppose if I got used to it a bit more it could be better, but when I first saw T9 I "got it" straight away, but this just frustrated me.

  • Well, I'd love a way to speedily enter text on my Palm... what a pity there's no version of this that works under PalmOS.

    Still, there's a linux version, so that's alright ;-)
  • Download [cam.ac.uk] it and check it out on your desktop (Windows, Linux). Pretty cool. It works really well for common words, and conveniently sets up common endings for you (-tion, -ing, etc.) But, uncommon words are really tough, and punctuation is seriously lacking. Sometimes it's even hard to find the space for the end of a word. I don't really see how you could use it to edit text either, it's painful just editing the current stream as it is. It is pretty damn cool....

    Z

    • Re:usage / puncuation (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DarkDust ( 239124 )
      After some sentences you pretty quickly get how to use this, even with uncommon words... like move your cursor back and it zooms out again, deleting what you typed. And it learns: I "entered" the sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", with 25.something cps because words like "fox" and "lazy" were not known, and the second time the characters were better sized so I could write the same sentence with 52.something cps... really awesome.

      But as a friend pointed out, this is only really useful for entering sentences (like you do when writing SMS). With a normal PDA you often just note down appointments and things, and Dasher wouldn't be that good on those things (like having to type lots of odd company names). Also missing punctuation and missing numbers are a thing to improve.

      But the overall concept is really awesome ! It's quite fun, IMHO :-)
  • Dasher is a competitive text-entry system wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used - for example,
    on a palmtop computer;
    on a wearable computer;

    it would be cool to see what would be written out during a rush hour scrum on the train if you're wearing the comp. i sense a whole new genre of literature...

  • neat idea; needs work. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by syukton ( 256348 )
    I had the most utterly difficult time entering 'hey there' ... I'd get 'hey the' and then it'd start throwing letters that weren't R at me, and while trying to surf around for that R, it just threw a bunch of garbage into my sentence. it's a neat idea, but it needs better 'prediction' skills.

    realistically speaking though, wouldn't it be easier to just use a keyboard? When my pda doesn't recognize what I'm inputting, it pops up a keyboard for me to use. The advantage of a keyboard is that I always know where the letters are. There isn't any fast-paced zooming or predictive AI; it's just me knowing which keys I want to press, and where those keys are located.

    I think it's faster, even if I can only 'type' one letter at a time.

    Sometimes it's best to just stick with what works, in my opinion.
  • I downloaded it and tried to do the old "The quick brown fox jumped over" thing and the thing couldn't handle it. A coupld of us have tried it and we can't get it to do it as quickly as a normal typist or even a graffiti user on a palm. The e-q relationship just doesn't pop up for us. Weird.

    • Did you load in the \input\dict.txt file? That would have loaded in 111000+ words so it would have been better able to predict what you were going to enter.

      If you didn't do that then the program would start out completely untrained (as indicated by the equal spacing of all the letter choices.) If you had completely entered the "quick brown fox" bit and then pressed F1 for new and tried again you would find that it had adjusted the sizes of the letter choices and would bring up the letter-pairs for "quick brown fox" very easily.

      I did this with "four score and seven years ago..." with the program untrained and while it took a bit the first time the second time went much faster.

  • Isn't the style of input like a fractal in a way? "Zooming" in on a single letter shows the entire alphabet in the space of that letter and so on (sometimes the letters are really small due to the softwares prediction). For the records, I coin the phrase "Fractal based input" ;-).
  • The problem with this over other forms of input (including types like t9) is that you have to focus on the screen all the time to see where your chosen letter appears. It would be like using a keyboard that has keys that shift locations all the time.
  • This would be a great tool for freeform writing. Just start forming sentences and see what you get at the end.

    Bet this would be useful to psychiatrists like the inkblot tests.
  • Download this, and give it a serious try. More than 20 seconds. If you try it for five minutes, you'll see the power of it.

    It's amazing how quickly you can pick up the basics (unlike Graffiti and other handwriting techniques).

    good lower case, poor punctuation. But it's a start of something great, I think. Plus, just letting your mouse wander generates some interesting results!

    Let it run in the background, as you work at your PC, in another window. It senses your mouse movement throughout the day, and leaves you with a profound poem after a hard day at work. My current poem (after typing this slashdot message says:

    rokylneatlic chehsismore. daed si luap. aftbaty never communist work abour reap. loopholebulconariat

    (how it came up with "never communist work", I'll never understand! But it did!) Don't play it backwards!

  • i've got to say...this software is scary. i'll try it, 'cause it looks like fun. But man oh man does that interface make me dizzy.
    perhaps it should come with a warning about mixing with cars and machinery...
    then again maybe this will help me make up for all the hallucinigens i never got when i was younger...
  • Wow. I downloaded, and tried it.
    At first it was really uncomfortable, and i didnt really know what to do with it, admittadly not having read any sort of help files, and being slightly distracted by wmcube spinning at 100% cpu load to my left, After a minute or so i could see it take wild stabs at what i was trying to say... putting words together for me and the such... kind of creepy in a neat, gadgety sort of way.

    I feel like it would need some work before it can be used on a PDA (screen size and CPU being less than that of a desktop, and all)
  • We used to play Quake after work. After about half an hour of viewing my offal from unusual angles, I used to quit, go home feeling slightly nauseous, and not want supper. When I spotted the pattern, I stopped Quaking, and I was OK. It was something to do with dipping and diving around a 3-D maze without your inner ear getting the swerves it was expecting, I guess. I am told that experienced Quakers play through this feeling and get over it, but I never did. Dasher gave me a bit of the same experience, whoops, 'scuse me...

    However, it is a brilliant way of explaining how arithmetic coding of text works.

  • First time I loaded it I got this vertigo rush, I started to get a little queasy, but... wow. Once you get the hang of it it's like sky-diving through the alphabet. As you're spelling you just pick the next letter and let yourself 'fall' towards it, it's really kind of relaxing if you have an empty stomach :)

  • wrong approach? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by firebat162 ( 463459 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2002 @06:46AM (#3768062)
    I downloaded and tried it. It's a neat approach, but I don't think it's the best way to input text... Like this, it requires too much thought. For instance, typing. Once a person gets used to typing, it is pretty much second nature. Not much thinking in terms of how to input letters. But with Dasher, you always have to be looking on the screen to see what letters are coming up. There are patterns but the patterns aren't static (I realize this is one of the strengths). Seems like it takes too much effort on the inputter's point of view to perform such an elementary task of inputting text.
    • You're quite used to typing, aren't you. I can see that you're so used to it that you now think it's natural.

      It's not. Not in the least. It's not only unnatural and difficult, it's dangerous.

      -Billy
  • ... in dasher:

    "computerstood seemed to preventury thorough the queen x rays that the poor of cupwells. if one of myfucks believe great for the universiolz"

    I got there in the end but as you can see I had to veer though some backroads to do it...

  • Tried this out a while ago, and I don't like it, but that's a personal preference.

    The concept is a little weird, because it varies somewhat from the usual input methods where the computer just waits passively until you've (clicked a button|pressed a key|made a stroke).

    There are, however, a number of very intriguing ideas in this one, especially the prediction part. /me being a fan of xstroke (full-screen handwriting recognition for the Linux ipaq), I'd love to see something like that ported, e.g. using prediction to tilt the results of the recognized character.

    As I see it, these two concepts on palm-device input (you can forget about keyboards at that size) are opposites:
    Handwriting recognition builds on an activity the human operator is very familiar with, but the computers still have a lot to catch up to before they have even a fraction of the handwriting recognition powers of almost every human, especially in the area of context (current recognition is by the letter, not by the word).
    Dasher, on the other hand, uses a very unusual and new method, but allows for great precision because it does what computers can do very well - choose from clearly demarked options.

    In the end, maybe a combination will emerge, e.g. handwriting recognition that if it isn't quite sure will show the characters it things you could've meant somewhere on the screen and allows you to choose the right one with a quick stroke in the right direction.

  • While admittedly, I haven't tried it, the fact that it seems purely dynamic is a litte daunting. Anything that zooms on mouse-over usually doesn't get the highest of usability ratings because the target area becomes less predictable. This is precisely why the Aqua Dock received many a complaint.

    This also made me think of that Fish Eye interface for browsing menus (where the text closest to the cursor is the biggest; farthest, smallest)... Anyway, I think that in it's zoomy nature, it leaves little time for people to actually think... And what about unusual character strings, or words not in the normal lexicon (abbreviations, acronyms...)? How easy is it to access the letter X right after Z?

    PS - Their description of rarely used letters being /harder/ to access is kinda scary. It should be written in the positive, that more common letters should be /easier/ to access.
  • for those of us who don't spell so good...
    maybe it would be good for compiling slashdot stories... :

  • random textes (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Did anyone try to let the tool produce its own sentences without moving the mouse. The result can be quite interesting. Here is a real example:

    ive off ajoritaquely eanwhelms to aeuserebral imagined.ius.zzlikestone could not words tired is wife. tellk you were
  • I wonder.... Do you think that it's more natural for us to see letters coming from the right and moving left, but Arabs would find it more comfortable for letters to come from the left, and Japanese for characters to come from the bottom?
  • it takes some gettin used to but after a few goes you really get into the hang of it, i dont use palms myself but i can see this being quite useful, the only real problem is screen size

    i got used to it by doing 'I like cheese' and 'My name is Antony', if you haven't already i recommend downloading it to try, its a kool way ot use up a spare 5 mins!
  • The problem here is that this requires total concentration: no looking up while entering data. On a pen-based computer with graffiti or transcriber, one often doesn't need to look down at the screen all the time in order to write.

    As an added bonus, it makes me quite nauseated. Immersive writing. Uuuuuhhhh.

    Now where was that thread on preventing motion sickness from intense immersive gaming?!?

  • Markov (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2002 @07:26AM (#3768164)
    This is exactly how Dasher works, except for one crucial point: we alter the SIZE of the shelf space devoted to each book in proportion to the probability of the corresponding text

    Basically they use a markov chain which has in it the probabilities that one letter will appear after another. It's very similar to the disassociated press generators you can find out there.

    For example, here [fourteenminutes.com] is one I wrote which generates new random words based on the probabilities of one pair of letters appearing after another pair. I used pairs because it generates more English-like words.

    It was "taught" using the contents of /usr/dict/words and written in Perl.

  • i played with the demo for a while and was surprised at how easy it was to learn. i see this having success in a few niche areas, but it will never catch on for general use for one main reason: it demands your visual attention. people won't want to stare at the screen while they're entering text. once you've practiced with a keyboard, character input on a PDA, or buttons on a cell phone you don't need to watch the input device or the sceen while you enter text. this leaves you free to watch the presenter, look at the paper you're transcribing, watch the road, etc...
  • Oh dear... I'm feeling rather ill. Anyone else tried cranking up the MaxBitRate setting on this beauty?
  • Reminds me of the Quikwriting [nyu.edu] project. I tried Dasher out, but found that it needs some work on predicting certain words.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Try aiming for the same letter until it repeats, you get a semi-wormhole easter egg!!
  • Quite often, I plan for tomorrow in the afternoon. I write notes of things that I have to do, double check appointments, etc, all on my Palm. Also quite often in the summer, I take long lunches at the local pub. I doubt that I would be able to combine my affection for lengthy pub lunches and my habbit of doing most of my input on the Palm in the afternoon with that text system whirling by.
  • A lot of people seem impressed (I wonder if they've even tried to use it), I have a contrary opinion.

    Whilst I found the area of letter an interesting idea. I found it extremely difficult / practically impossible to use in practice. It's just a appears chaotic jumble of letters, it is difficult to find the correct letter, I think a better approach would be to it use letter frequency to govern the letter placement, with common letters being closer to the centre line.

    I think the random jumble of colours made me feel dizzy, though this may be fixable by using a grey scale.

    It is too easy to lose letters over the edge, if the letters moved around the edge to produce a curve, may be a better approach.

    There is no way to get special characters or upper case letters, though this problem could be fixed by clicking the mouse or touching the screen to toggle case.
  • Version 2.*.* - C - for linux and windoze desktops

    For something coming out of Cambridge University I wouldn't expect them to mutilate the spelling of "Windows".

    We wouldn't like it if people wrote "Linsux" so why write MicroShaft, M$ or any other variants out there?

    It doesn't help the cause in the slightest however "amusing" you might think it is. It just makes you look like a 14 year old with bad spelling. In fact, it'll probably do more harm than good.

    For more useful tips check out the Linux Advocacy FAQ.

  • Dasher sounds pretty cool, but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2002 @07:48AM (#3768287) Homepage
    ...I'll wait for the Dancer or maybe the Prancer project. Of course these will be followed up by the launch of the Vixen, Comet, and Cupid projects. Though the Donnor project was nothing more than a party, the Blitzen should prove to be innovative. Of course, the Rudolph project will help shed more light on the issue.
  • Very cool concept. I like how it feels like I'm falling into what I was thinking. However, I'm pretty sure I'm faster on my Zaurus thumbboard than I would be with this sort of hunt-and-slide interface.

  • Ouija board, magic 8-ball, and Dasher! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Black Perl ( 12686 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2002 @07:55AM (#3768323)
    It's fun to just click once to get it started, and then let it say what it wants to... I just did it, and it spelled out "pox today for the king."
  • Check out IBM's ATOMIK [ibm.com] project. The acronym stands for "Alphabetically Tuned and Optimized Mobile Interface Keyboard".

    Basic Features: (lifted from the Alphaworks website)
    • Higher movement efficiency than any other existing touch keyboard.
    • Alphabetically-tuned layout: Generally, letters from A to Z run from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the keyboard. This layout helps novice users find letters that are not yet memorized.
    • Letter connectivity of common words: Many common words or comment fragments of words, such as "the" and "ing" are totally connected.
  • I think this is one of the few areas where software patents actually make sence (I assume the people who made this have got some kind of patent for it). Unlike a lot of examples of software patents this is 'non obvious' and (as far as I know) is not a simple extention of someone else's work. Perhaps this could be used as a standard to judge other software patents: If something does not achive this standard of idea it should not be patentable.
  • Sharp's Linux-based handheld already does something similar. While you are writing (in normal handwriting, not Grafiti), a selection of possible words appears directly above the entry area. If the word appears there, you simply click on it and move on to the next word. Very cool. Very slick.

    -Sam
  • Remember this file explorer with the / in the middle and the subdirectories around arranged as a circle, and you drag subtrees near the center to expand them?
    This is a very similar concept, I think...
    Arrrgh, I can't find it anymore :-(
    Anyone knows where to find it?...
  • Wow! I'm telling you this tool is powerful. Being a non-english I tried to start from scratch by reseting the dictionary. In a few sentences I already had a lot of letters well predicted.

    Man I love when people are so smart!
    Yet I agree with a lot of you guys. This will probably be better for unable people but I would love to use it on my Palm.
  • My cell phone uses predictive text and it has yet to ever actually predict the correct words, rendering itself fairly useless to me.

  • Vomit Palm-it (Score:2, Funny)

    by 3Suns ( 250606 )
    "Dude, you don't look so good... you ok?"

    "Yeah, I've just been typing on my PDA too long. This is really making me nauseous."

    "I know how you feel. Here, have some dramamine."

    "Thanks, man. ::gulp:: A little while ago I almost passed out. Looked up to see I'd just told my boss how attractive his mother is, and accidentally fired off an email to my wife complaining about the water quality in Ecuador."

    "No good, dude. If there's such a thing as a gadget that's too easy to use, I think you've found it. Here, try this. It's called a keyboard."

  • I've been testing the thing for a few minutes, and I think it's impressive (though I was quite skeptical in the beginning).
    What's more, I noticed it really makes one memorize the order of the letters in the alphabet!!

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