NoteTaker ========= Author: Scott Powell (of Evolutionary Systems) Version: 1.3 (Shareware) Date: 31/07/1999 Installation Notes ------------------ Simply use The PalmPilot Install Tool (InstApp.exe) to install the 'note.prc' file onto your PalmPilot. You must also install the ONE of the vocabulary databases (also using 'instapp'). Either: root-words derived-words Size (Kbytes) Comments ---------- ------------- ------------- -------- 'words.pdb' 13264 16893 85 Contains mostly 'rarer' words 'words2.pdb' 16432 21303 105 As above + more common words 'words3.pdb' 19420 26120 117 As above + even more words NOTE: If you use SpellCheck, you must delete it from your PalmPilot!! The two applications will be in conflict! Instructions & Guide -------------------- NoteTaker is a MemoPad replacement app which includes an English spelling checker, and: - an easy to use user interface (just a double tap on the word you wish to check) - intuitive 'Word Suggestion'. Prompts you with words that you are likely to be typing, saving you many Graffiti strokes. - a 'slim' database (only ~80K) containing 'harder' words rather than common words which you are unlikely to want to look up (thus saving valuable RAM). NOTE: Now has alternate databases with more common words, improving the Word Suggestion/Completion feature. - simply tap on words in the list box and the word you selected replaces the word you double tapped. - a highly optimized, compressed database. For registered users: - Has 'Copy' & 'Cut' buttons on popup screen, to copy/cut the selected word to the clipboard. - Optional supplemental dictionary. You can maintain a list of 'extra' words, possibly specialised to your occupation. (add them from your Pilot, or on your desktop computer) Here is a detailed description of the program's operation. - first open an existing document, or tap the 'New' button. Start typing a word and after writing enough of the 'prefix' double tap on this word with the pen. OR: double tap on a word already contained in a document - the SpellCheck window should now pop-up, with the text you tapped on entered into a text field, with words beginning with that text in the listbox below. - use the hardware up and down buttons to scroll the list up and down. - If you see the word you were looking for just tap on the listbox entry, automatically replacing the original text with the word you selected. OR: if the word you selected has a full-stop ('.') in it, this indicates that the word has various suffixes that are possible. When you tap on a list entry like this the list is replaced with all the possible expansions of that word. eg. sceptic.al.ly gets expanded to: sceptic sceptical sceptically - Simply tap on the particular word you want, OR tap the 'Done' button to exit SpellCheck without selecting a word. OR: If the word wasn't found, try deleting trailing parts of the word from the text field (after the 'text:' prompt). eg. if 'familliar' was entered, try deleting the 'liar' part to get just 'famil'. Now the list will show all known words starting with 'famil'. - OR, Tap the 'Copy' button to copy the double-tapped word to the clipboard. (Registered users only) Configuring NoteTaker --------------------- From the memo list screen, select the 'Options' menu. See below in the 'History' section about the various options and features available. History ------- Can now scan whole document for unknown words! Just press the 'Skip' button to scan the document for an unknown word. If you have a supplemental dictionary installed you can add the unknown word by pressing the 'Add' button. Supplemental Dictionary support! The Options screen now has menu items for creating a supplemental dictionary. This creates a Memo document which will be appended to when adding words 'on the fly', and can be directly edited by you, either on the Pilot or the Desktop. NOTE: If you add/modify/remove words from this document you MUST rebuild the index by selecting the 'Rebuild Index' menu item in the Options screen! Upper/lower case handling If you have Caps Lock on the word lists will be convereted to upper case. Also, if the word in the database has an upper case letter as its first character, selecting that word preserves the initial upper case (previously didn't). 'Copy' button to popup screen This works around the conflict with SelectHack. There was no clean way for the two to co-exist, so we added the function to NoteTaker as many people complained about the conflict. 'Wait for pause' feature (for word suggestion/completion) Now you can specify whether you want the popup lists to come up ONLY when there is a slight pause in the graffiti input. This seems to be a lot less annoying, and speeds up the processing of the Graffiti strokes. Go to the 'Options' dialog of 'Word Completion' and choose from the options after the 'Wait:' label. NOTE: --- NEW FEATURE!! --- When a popup list is up, tap on the 'menu' silk-screen button and the currently selected item in the list (usually the preferred one) is automatically selected - saving you time. Strategy of 'Word Suggestion'. The suggested words have been optimized even more. For example on typing a 't', the following words are suggested: the that this they time These are statistically the most used in English (starting with 't' of course). If you now type 'h' (ie. it's now 'th' that has been entered), you get these suggested: then there think their.s them None of the 'th' words from the first list are included in this second list. Extensive controls in 'Options'. The 'Options' screen now has the two 'Options' dialogues implemented. You can control where the popup lists get placed, how long they stay up for, whether or not you want the 'word suggestion' feature, and whether you want a space inserted after completed words. You can also configure the 'Graffiti Assist' feature, by tapping its 'Options' button. The dialogue gives you up to 12 characters you can effectively 're-map'. This re-mapping only happens when you type the BACKSPACE stroke - this is interpreted as "that's NOT the character I wanted" :-) Instead of doing "Charcter, Backspace, Character-You-Wanted" you just enter pairs of these erroneous characters in this dialogue, and then enable the 'Graffiti Assist' checkbox. Now, a backspace over one of these characters automatically gets corrected to your preference. NOTE: it is only useful configuring characters that commonly get interpreted wrong, otherwise it can be annoying. Just clear the other character pairs (of the 12) if you don't want to use them. Intuitive Word Suggestion When starting a word, a list will popup of the most common English words starting with what you have already typed. TRY IT OUT - go to the Options screen and check the 'Word Completion' checkbox. We hope to have a seperate preferance for word suggestion very soon. For now turning on 'Word Completion' enables both 'Word Suggestion' and 'Word Completion'. The two are very similar, but have some slightly different semantics. Word Completion When typing in a word and enough letters have been entered to fairly uniquely narrow down a word, SpellCheck will automatically popup a list of possible words which you are tying to enter. Just tap on the word desired, or just keep typing (or tap outside the popup list) to ignore the suggestion. You can enable/disable this feaure by setting the corresponding checkbox in the SpellConfig application. Graffiti Assist see above for this feature. ('SpellConfig') Known Problems -------------- - Currently the word lookup is 'exact', ie. it looks into an index of known words. We hope to get phonetic matching implemented in a future version, so that it shows likely matches (based on sound) of incorrectly spelled words. Vocabulary Issues ----------------- Undoubtedly the vocabulary in the initial version of 'words.pdb' will need to be expanded. Presently there are approximately 13000 'root' words in the database, with information on words formed from these root words (eg. sceptic -> sceptical) The words currently in the database have been picked by 'rareness', or words with exceptional spelling, so that the amount of RAM being used is minimized. Please Email amendments and words you would like to have in the vocabulary to the following address: support@evolutionary.net with the title set to 'Spell', so that we can separate the mail efficiently. Registration ------------ This program is only operable for 15 days. If you like this program then you can register by pointing your Web browser to the following URL: http://www.evolutionary.net/register.htm This site allows you to pay online. In a day or two of registering you will receive a 'key' via Email which you enter by selecting the 'About...' menu in the Pilot app. Revision History ---------------- 31/07/1999 1.3 * Added font selection to edit screen. 27/12/1998 1.2 * Added support for 'Private' memos. 23/08/1998 1.1a * Fixed memo list scrolling bug. * Fixed Fatal Exception when adding word just after creating/restoring supp. dict. 21/08/1998 1.1 * Added ScrollBar support for edit screen (PalmOS 2.x and up only; Scroll buttons added for PalmOS 1.x) * Can also scroll edit screen using the hardware up and down buttons. 16/08/1998 1.0 Initial release Credits ------- thanks to: - John J. Lehett for the GNU 'C' port. - Wes Cherry for 'PILRC' Standard Disclaimer Stuff ------------------------- This program is shareware, and without guarantee of merchantability. We take no responsibility in any loss of data or productivity in case of operating failures.