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Dasher Available For Mac OS X
Fluffy the Cat writes "Dasher is an innovative predictive text input system that can be driven entirely by the mouse. It's been around for Windows and Linux for a while now, but a beta version for Mac OS X has just been released. Check it out, and take a look at that transparency option in the preferences! Next on the feature list is entering text directly into other applications ..."
if you are good with the alphabet and get the hang of the interface, you can probably get pretty good speed
The best we've measured is about 40WPM, so it's pretty close to a moderately fast non-touch typist
Why would desktop/laptop users with full keyboards need to use this? It seems difficult for people with disabilities to use such a system.
You'd be surprised - large numbers of disabled users do use standard hardware with additional input devices. There's other potential advantages, too - we've had RSI sufferers tell us that it's preferable to a keyboard (though this is going to depend on mouse setup, I guess).
One other thing is that kids tend to find it significantly more entertaining than a typing tutor, and it's fairly good at encouraging correct spellings...
but with Dasher, one will always need to concentrate on the input... just by the nature of it
The transparency feature of the OS X version actually helps here. Make it sufficiently see-through and put it on top of the text that you're writing, and you ought to be able to flick your attention between the two without getting lost. It helps if you make the text window font a fairly thick bold one.