Dasher Help

Writing with Dasher
Copy text to other applications
Training texts
History
Feedback

Writing with Dasher

• To open Dasher, tap   > Programs > Dasher.
• Initially, the characters appear in boxes in a vertical column on the right hand side (figure 1).
• Start by pressing the stylus on the centre and move towards the first letter you want to write. eg. 't'.

Figure 1: Initial configuration.

• The display will start to zoom in towards the 't' (figure 2).

Figure 2: Writing 't'.

• You can stop at any time by lifting the stylus.
• The horizontal direction controls the rate of zooming in. Moving the stylus to the right zooms in. Moving the stylus to the left zooms out. The vertical determines the place which is being zoomed in on.
• As the desired letter moves towards the crosshair, further letters can be selected by searching within the box of the previous letter. In figure 3, 'h' is being selected.

Figure 3: Writing 't' followed by 'h'.

• Always look inside the current letter for the next letter. For example, to write 'the', point at the 'e' within 'h' (figure 4), and not the 'e' within 't' (figure 5).

Figure 4: How to write 'the'.

Figure 5: How not to write 'the'.

• The text box above the display shows what is being written.
• To start again, tap New .

Copying text to other applications

• Select the text by dragging with the stylus. Tap Edit > Copy to paste to the clipboard.

Training texts

• Dasher uses a language model, trained on two pieces of text.
• The first is /Program Files/Dasher/source.txt which is installed with Dasher.
• The second is /My Documents/Dasher.txt. As you write with Dasher, the text is appended to the file. Therefore, repeated use of Dasher will improve the langauage model and also writing speed.

Release history

New in version 2.0.3

• Language model tweaked - integer arithmetic.
• Version 2.0.2 misbuild

New in version 2.0.1

• Capital letters and punctuation
• Selecting text in the text box allows it to be replaced.
• The display updates when you move the cursor in the text box.

Still to come

• Sort out long load time.
• Implement Dasher as a proper input method, alongside keyboard, character recognizer, etc. I don't know how to do this yet.
• A dictionary.
• Reduce memory consumption.
• Add more characters; punctuation and symbols.

Feedback

• If you have any comments, please send them to djw30@mrao.cam.ac.uk
• Discuss Dasher at Yahoo! Groups. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dasher-text-entry/join or send an email to dasher-text-entry-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
• Please let me know if you have any experience with writing input methods and would like to help.