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A Better Way to Enter Text On a Palmtop
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."
...and I think it's quite promising, altough at the moment I still achieve higher speeds using T9 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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
But this feels like something Jeff 'Yak' Minter would have thought of a long time ago. Attack of the Mutant Alphabet?
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.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
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.
michael at slashdot.org: The real answer is that a couple of the slashdot authors are sick.
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
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
If they haven't patented the consept you could make an open source program that do exactly the same thing, no reverse engineering required
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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...
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"Yes, I have breasts. Now quit looking at them"
http://www.geek-ware.co.uk
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.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
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.
no sig.
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
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 :)
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.
Tried this out a while ago, and I don't like it, but that's a personal preference.
/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.
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.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
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.
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 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.
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Try aiming for the same letter until it repeats, you get a semi-wormhole easter egg!!
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.
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.
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...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.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
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."
bp
Basic Features: (lifted from the Alphaworks website)
Michael C. Hollinger
"Dude, you don't look so good... you ok?"
::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."
"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.
"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."
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
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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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.
Follow me
Probably a lot more readable.
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I did that sentence in under a minute.
Try adjusting the Dasher options. Set the max bitrate to 4 and check the "Word" box.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
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.
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It'd be interesting to feed Katz articles (or Slashdot articles in general) to Columbia Newsblaster and see how it summarized them...
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
The capital letters are directly below the lowercase ones, once you turn on the setting for them. The punctuation is below all the letters.
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.