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Type With Your Eyes

Posted by timothy on from the type-from-a-full-suspension dept.

hof writes: "Ever wanted to enter text by just looking at the screen? Take a look at Dasher. You enter text by looking or pointing to letters or words which the program thinks you are about to enter. I wonder how this can be optimized for coding -- a break for your wrists, and the code is available under GPL."

4 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Didn't /. already cover this? by The+Rev · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/26/068231 &mode=nested&tid=100

    1. Re:Didn't /. already cover this? by Tomun · · Score: 2, Informative

      True, but only version 3 is GPL and its not available yet..

  2. Also at Nature.com by Elledan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nature Science Update: Eyes write

    --
    Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
  3. Re:utterly slow by big_gibbon · · Score: 4, Informative

    True - if that was how it worked.

    Being bored and at work I downloaded Dasher to give it a go - and I'm pleasantly surprised. No, I wont be using it as a keyboard replacement any time soon, but for times where a keyboard is inconvenient, impractical, or simply impossible, it looks like it's be a worthy substitute.

    The way it works is pretty cunning - the webpage suggests you use driving as a metaphor, which works very well. Rather than an onscreen keyboard, you "drive" down the route of the text you want to type. Think of it as a tree with 26 (OK, 27 with spaces, more with punctuation) branches at each level - so you would start at H, and then "drive" down the e, l, l, o branches. Aiding you in this is the software, which makes guesses as to what you're about to type and makes those "roads" more prominent and easier to "drive" down.

    I'd really recommend people download this and give it a go. It's actually quite a lot of fun :)

    Phil