This Program, application, whatever you want to call it, managed to catch my imagination. It is called: Dasher and it looks like this;
It is hard to classify, except that it is a viable replacement for the keyboard. It consists of a white text winow and a rather dull control window with an alphabet down the right hand side. A click in the control window and things start to get interesting.
Rather than tapping keys you simply aim your cursor towards an onward rushing wall of letters - like this;
You can see that I wrote this text using Dasher.
What happens when you navigate (just using one finger on the trackpad - the black square is the cursor) towards the wall of letters, is that they begin to accelerate towards you, while jostling for position to make meaningful words.
Yep it is predictive text, but not as you know it, unlike the crass versions that exist on mobile phones, this text actually seems to present words that you were likely to want - and the way the words appear very quickly becomes intuitive. Even better, you can feed the program with an example document that you have written and it begins to gat a feeling for the type of words that you use. I tried feeding it some James Joyce, in the form of a few pages of Finnegans Wake, and it began to offer me words like wikawade world - I felt sufficiently Joycified.
The first few minutes of Dasher can be a bit perplexing, but provided that you start off slowly, it is amazing just how quickly the thing becomes completely intuitive, far quicker than any keyboard.
I have been using it for 2 days now and am seriously considering using it in preference to the keyboard for writing.
One consideration is that you really do need to be able to spell, mainly because the predictive text engine uses all of its resources to feed you probable words, rather than reading what you have written and correcting it - a very pleasant change from the condescending microsoft paperclip and its inherent distrust of you as a stupid 'user' - Dasher instead seems to credit you with intelligence and offer viable suggestions and creative diversions.
There are many settings that can be changed to suit your preference, almost every conceivable language is supported, even french / english dual language and music? you can opt for simple lower case or full punctuation, both cases and obscure symbols, and a few between.
Most intriguing is the speed setting, turn it up and writing suddenly becomes reminiscent of a good playstation racing game.
I couldn't resist trying 2 experiments:
First I tried setting out and following the most prominent suggestions to see what got written. The result was fairly diverse but strangely unsatisfying. although I now know that once it was a bit better trained it might have been more fun.
Secondly I set the speed to full, carefully positioned the cursor so that the letters where hurtling towards it, and went to make a cup of coffee. Ten minutes later I had a vast tract of text, very intriguing, inspiring, amusing and in some cases vaguely prophetic text. A bit of puctuation and editing and there was a long poem, thoughtfully entitled NOCTURNE by Dasher itself.
This IS software with a future, if you have RSI it could save your aching wrists (It was developed for RSI victims I believe), TRY IT. If you don't yet have RSI try it anyway. Oh why not just give it a go, you might like it as much as I do.
P.S. Dasher has been developed for most operating systems, it works well on the mac, although it could do with being integrated into the heart of the system so that you could use it directly in other applications (at the moment all text must be written in the white box and then cut/pasted into the program of your choice). I will be trying the windows mobile version as soon as I've finished this post. Unix and that other OS are also catered for.
It is hard to classify, except that it is a viable replacement for the keyboard. It consists of a white text winow and a rather dull control window with an alphabet down the right hand side. A click in the control window and things start to get interesting.
Rather than tapping keys you simply aim your cursor towards an onward rushing wall of letters - like this;
You can see that I wrote this text using Dasher.
What happens when you navigate (just using one finger on the trackpad - the black square is the cursor) towards the wall of letters, is that they begin to accelerate towards you, while jostling for position to make meaningful words.
Yep it is predictive text, but not as you know it, unlike the crass versions that exist on mobile phones, this text actually seems to present words that you were likely to want - and the way the words appear very quickly becomes intuitive. Even better, you can feed the program with an example document that you have written and it begins to gat a feeling for the type of words that you use. I tried feeding it some James Joyce, in the form of a few pages of Finnegans Wake, and it began to offer me words like wikawade world - I felt sufficiently Joycified.
The first few minutes of Dasher can be a bit perplexing, but provided that you start off slowly, it is amazing just how quickly the thing becomes completely intuitive, far quicker than any keyboard.
I have been using it for 2 days now and am seriously considering using it in preference to the keyboard for writing.
One consideration is that you really do need to be able to spell, mainly because the predictive text engine uses all of its resources to feed you probable words, rather than reading what you have written and correcting it - a very pleasant change from the condescending microsoft paperclip and its inherent distrust of you as a stupid 'user' - Dasher instead seems to credit you with intelligence and offer viable suggestions and creative diversions.
There are many settings that can be changed to suit your preference, almost every conceivable language is supported, even french / english dual language and music? you can opt for simple lower case or full punctuation, both cases and obscure symbols, and a few between.
Most intriguing is the speed setting, turn it up and writing suddenly becomes reminiscent of a good playstation racing game.
I couldn't resist trying 2 experiments:
First I tried setting out and following the most prominent suggestions to see what got written. The result was fairly diverse but strangely unsatisfying. although I now know that once it was a bit better trained it might have been more fun.
Secondly I set the speed to full, carefully positioned the cursor so that the letters where hurtling towards it, and went to make a cup of coffee. Ten minutes later I had a vast tract of text, very intriguing, inspiring, amusing and in some cases vaguely prophetic text. A bit of puctuation and editing and there was a long poem, thoughtfully entitled NOCTURNE by Dasher itself.
This IS software with a future, if you have RSI it could save your aching wrists (It was developed for RSI victims I believe), TRY IT. If you don't yet have RSI try it anyway. Oh why not just give it a go, you might like it as much as I do.
P.S. Dasher has been developed for most operating systems, it works well on the mac, although it could do with being integrated into the heart of the system so that you could use it directly in other applications (at the moment all text must be written in the white box and then cut/pasted into the program of your choice). I will be trying the windows mobile version as soon as I've finished this post. Unix and that other OS are also catered for.
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