bionic (1) dasher.1.gz

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 --options.

       -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>.

SEE ALSO

       The Dasher project web page is ⟨http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/⟩