dasher

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 2008-02-28
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NAME

dasher - graphical predictive text entry system

SYNOPSIS

dasher [OPTIONS] [filename]

DESCRIPTION

Dasher is an information-efficient text-entry interface, driven by natural continuous pointing gestures. Dasher is a competitive text-entry system wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used.

OPTIONS

dasher takes the following options:

-a, --appstyle=STYLE: Application style. STYLE can be any of traditional, direct, compose, or fullscreen. The default is whatever was specified on the previous invocation of Dasher, or traditional when Dasher is started for the first time.
-?, --help: Describe command line options.
--help-options: Describe the options available with --optionsFR.
-o, --options [option=value[,option=value...]]: Override stored options. Options values are remembered for subsequent invocations of Dasher.

USAGE

The main Dasher interface is a window with a blank background containing a column of letters on the right hand side. Click the mouse button to start. When the pointer is to the right of the crosshair the screen will zoom towards the point underneath the mouse pointer. To select a letter, move the mouse pointer into it and watch how it zooms underneath the crosshair. A new column of letters will appear. Staying within the box for the selected letter, move the pointer over one of these letters to select it as the next letter. Moving the mouse pointer to the left of the crosshair, or outside of the box for previously selected letters, allows you to change previously selected letters.

Application Styles

traditional: Dasher displays an edit box above the main window. Text entered via Dasher will appear in the edit box allowing the text to be edited directly.
direct: The edit box is not displayed. Dasher runs without focus and the text goes into whatever window does have focus. This way you can use it more practically to run your desktop.
fullscreen: dasher expands to the entire screen.

MENUS

File

New: Clear the edit box and associate a random filename with it.
Open: Read a text file into the edit box for further editing.
Save: Save the contents of the edit box to its associated file.
Save as: Save the contents of the edit box to a selected file.
Append to file: Add the contents of the edit box to the end of a selected file.
Import training text: Use a file to further improve Dasher's prediction of the next letters to present (for instance, a training file containing scientific terms to add to the initial English training). Training files must be UTF-8 encoded.
Quit: Exit Dasher.

Edit

Cut: Remove the highlighted text from the edit box and copy it to the clipboard.
Copy: Copy the highlighted text from the edit box to the clipboard but don't remove it.
Paste: Paste the contents of the clipboard into the edit box at the position of the cursor.
Copy all: Copy the entire contents of the edit box to the clipboard.
Select all: Highlight all of the text in the edit box.

Options

Preferences: Opens the preferences dialog.

Help

About Dasher: Display information about the current version of Dasher

THE PREFERENCES DIALOG

The preferences dialog is split into several panes.

Alphabet

Choose a different alphabet. Dasher will automatically retrain itself if the alphabet specified training file is present.

Colour

Choose a different colour scheme.

Control

Alter various control options

One dimensional mode: Map the Y position of the mouse to a 2 dimensional position on the Dasher canvas (useful for limited mobility users)
Eyetracker mode: Similar to one dimensional mode, but behaves normally except at the right-hand side of the canvas. Designed for eyetracker users.

CONVERTING TRAINING FILES TO UTF-8

Dasher requires that training files be in the UTF-8 format, whereas most text files are likely to be in ISO-8859 format. This doesn't matter for plain text, but accented characters are encoded differently. In order to convert them, use the iconv(1) program. For instance, if your training file is in ISO-8859-1 format (Western European), run iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 trainingfile >newtrainingfile

FILES

/usr/share/doc/dasher: Directory containing system-wide configuration files.
~/.dasher: Directory containing user specific configuration files.

Dasher will utilise files of the following form from both of these directories:

alphabet.ALPHABET.xml: The files defining the alphabets available to Dasher.
colour.SCHEME.xml: The files defining the colour schemes available to Dasher.
training_LANGUAGE*.txt: Files containing the training data used by Dasher. These are UTF-8 encoded text and should contain a representative sample of the relevant language. User specific training files can be used to augment system wide data.

Refer to the Dasher manual for more information regarding the format and editing of these files.

AUTHOR

The Dasher Project <dasher@mrao.phy.cam.ac.uk>.