Swype - Jaw dropping fast and accurate entry of text via touch screen [w/video]

[Kostis Anagnostopoulos]

On Fri 12 Sep 2008 15:42:31 Stroller wrote:
> On 11 Sep 2008, at 14:17, Kostis Anagnostopoulos wrote:
> > On Thu 11 Sep 2008 01:31:27 Didier Raboud wrote:
> >> nickd wrote:
> >> Take a look at the other method previously pointed by Dan :
> >> http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/
> >>
> >> It's GPL...
> >
> > I don't like Dasher because it introduces uncontrolled "waiting
> > states",
> > in order for the target letter to reach the center.
>
> Surely the "waiting state" is controlled - by moving the cursor to
> the right (I imagine tilting the Freerunner) the stream of letters
> speeds up.

Yet, sometimes you just have to slowdown untill the needed letter appears.

In any way, it is not the same as a deterministic action under your controll,
lets say, i move from point a to point b, and it would take me as much time as 
i like!
Thats what i meant with "uncontrollable", 
i din't mean totally-out-of-my-controll.

> > On Dasher's site they make a comparison with car-driving.
> > I think that if we were given the chance,
> > we would preffere a click-to-destination instead of a steering-
> > wheel car-UI.
>
> At some point analogies always break - probably as soon as you start
> using them to expand outside anything that the original analogiser
> had in mind. ;)
>
> The destination is the completed sentence of words. It is held
> initially inside your mind, and it is impossible to give the target
> device this "destination" without any intervening steps. Just as we
> don't yet have autonomous automobiles, either, a "steering-wheel" (or
> some other control device) is clearly necessary to get the words out
> of your head & into the device.

Wel, the target for me is the letters-of-a-world, not the world,
so from this point of view, yes click or signature-like typing is more like 
controlling a variable but a steering wheel is like controlling the 
derivative of that variable.
Hence the wait-states!

I need to say that, concerning mobile devices, i had try to envision such a 
input-method myself, and the Dasher is as close as it gets to what i might 
had end up with.
My kudos to the programmers and designers of Dasher.