Dasher Source Code And Documentation Available

Matthew Garrett writes "You've covered dasher before, but the source code is now available for download under the GPL. There's also now documentation for developers who want to port Dasher to other platforms - there's currently Windows and GTK front ends, plus experimental GTK2 code and ports to the GPE and Opie Linux PDA environments being worked on, and optional integration with the Gnome accessibilty framework is on the cards. Anyone fancy a MacOS port?"

What Dasher is

[andfarm]

Dasher is apparently a mouse-based input method that does a sort of wierd zooming thing -- described as "Attack of the Killer Alphabets". Could be useful for hands-free use, like for a quadraplegic, but not especially good for general use. Keyboard is still faster if you've still got full use of your hands.

Re:What Dasher is

[the aviator]

It depends what you define by "general use". While a QWERTY keyboard may be much faster for an experienced typist on a large machine, Dasher is perfect for PDAs and cellphones where space is at a premium.

Re:What Dasher is

[Prowl]

i thought it was more like predictive text for pda type devices.

Re:What Dasher is

[p3d0]

"Keyboard is still better"? If only there were a "-1: Obvious" moderation...

Wow

[Apreche]

wow, this dasher is really innovative and awesome. It's an especially fun toy as well. I like to put the mouse in one plae and see what words come out, its really neat.

embiggered targets

[Hubert_Shrump]

Looking at the demo, it's pretty neat -- though I wonder if you could target phonemes rather than words -- might give you a speed increase.

The idea that as the letters become more probable, the bigger they get - that would be a great UI feature.

I'd like to have the close box on a program that's pissing me off start to grow. I know the power switch does.

Submission guidelines?

[Thing 1]

You've covered dasher before, but the source code is now available for download under the GPL. [...]

I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but it would really help if you describe the thing you're talking about. I have no idea what dasher is or whether I'd want it based on your submission.

Perhaps this is a neat trick to get click-throughs, and I should be impressed, but c'mon -- if the submitter's not going to say what it is then at least the "editor" should.

Re:Submission guidelines?

[Clith]

You might have been moderated as "informative" if you had found out what it is for yourself and mentioned it in your reply. Seems kind of hypocritical, really.

Here's some text from the " What is Dasher For? [cam.ac.uk]" web page:

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

Oooh, ahhh..

Hedious website

[zaqattack911]

Call me troll, or offtopic if you wish.

But I think at this point a well designed, nice website is as important as the product it is selling/about.

Dasher's website is really ugly. Great software idea though!

--Zuchini

It's hard...

[CheesyMoo]

I still can't figure out how to write an 's'.