1DASHER(1) User Commands DASHER(1)
2
6 dasher - graphical predictive text entry system
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10 less [-wop] [filename]
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14 dasher is an information-efficient text-entry interface, driven by nat‐
15 ural continuous pointing gestures. Dasher is a competitive text-entry
16 system wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used.
17
20 dasher takes the following options:
21 -o Dasher will appear without a text edit box and will default to
23 entering text into other windows.
24 -p Dasher will open a preferences window and not the main window.
26 -s Dasher will output the entered text to stdout whenever stopped.
28 Only text entered since the last stop will be output.
29 -w Whenever Dasher is stopped, the time taken, number of characters
31 entered, and number of bits of information will be displayed,
32 along with ratios of these quantities.
33
36 After startup, Dasher will present the user with a window containing
37 two major sections. The top portion is the edit box - text entered via
38 Dasher will appear here, and the text may also be edited directly. The
39 bottom portion is the main Dasher interface and will display a blank
40 background with a column of letters on the right hand side. Clicking
41 the mouse button will start the model, and the screen will zoom towards
42 the point underneath the mouse pointer. To select a letter, move the
43 mouse pointer into it and watch how it zooms underneat the crosshair.
44 Within the selected letter, a new column of letters will appear. Move
45 the pointer over one of these letters to select it as the next letter.
46 To correct mistakes, move the mouse pointer to the left of the
47 crosshair and Dasher will zoom out allowing you to select new letters.
48
51 File
52 New Restore Dasher to the state it was in when started
53 Open Read a text file into the Dasher edit box for further editting
56 Save Save the contents of the Dasher edit box to a file
59 Save as
62 Save the contents of the Dasher edit box to a file chosen by the
63 user
64 Append to file
67 Add the contents of the Dasher edit box to the end of a file
68 chosen by the user
69 Import training text
72 Use a file to further train Dasher (for instance, a training
73 file containing scientific terms to add to the initial English
74 training). Training files must be UTF-8 encoded.
75 Exit Quit Dasher
78 Edit
81 Cut Remove the highlighted text from the edit box and copy it to the
82 clipboard
83 Copy Copy the highlighted text from the edit box to the clipboard but
86 don't remove it
87 Paste Paste the contents of the clipboard into the edit box at the
90 position of the cursor
91 Copy all
94 Copy the entire contents of the edit box to the clipboard
95 Select all
98 Highlight all of the text in the edit box
99 Options
102 Preferences
103 Opens the preferences dialog (see THE PREFERENCES DIALOG below)
104 Edit font
107 Choose the font used in the edit box
108 Dasher font
111 Choose the font used in the Dasher canvas
112 Dasher font size
115 Choose the size of the font used in the Dasher canvas
116 Reset fonts
119 Reset the fonts back to the defaults
120 Enter text into other windows
123 Make Dasher enter text into the currently focused window.
124 Requires Dasher to have been built with Note that some languages
125 will only work correctly if XFree 4.0.2 or higher is being used.
126 Control mode
129 Provides a control node at the bottom of the screen. This allows
130 various tasks to be performed inside Dasher, such as editing the
131 text written, speaking entered text and stopping or pausing
132 Dasher. If compiled with and using a desktop supporting the ATK
133 accessibility framework, compliant applications will have their
134 menu trees exported to Dasher and these may be accessed via this
135 node.
136 Help
139 About Dasher
140 Display information about the current version of Dasher
141
144 The preferences dialog is split into several panes.
145 Alphabet
148 Choose a different alphabet. Dasher will automatically retrain itself
149 if the alphabet specified training file is present
150 Colour
153 Choose a different colour scheme.
154 Control
157 Alter various control options
158 One dimensional mode
161 Map the Y position of the mouse to a 2 dimensional position on
162 the Dasher canvas (useful for limited mobility users)
163 Eyetracker mode
166 Similar to one dimensional mode, but behaves normally except at
167 the right-hand side of the canvas. Designed for eyetracker
168 users.
169 Start on left mouse button
172 The left mouse button will toggle Dasher between running and
173 paused state
174 Start on space bar
177 The space bar will toggle Dasher between running and paused
178 state
179 Start with mouse position
182 When paused, Dasher will display a red box. If the pointer is
183 held in the red box until a yellow box appears, and then in the
184 yellow box until it vanishes, Dasher will start. This allows
185 users with no button input to start and stop Dasher.
186 Copy all on stop
189 Toggle whether the current text is automatically copied to the
190 clipboard when Dasher is stopped
191 Speak on stop
194 Toggle whether the newly entered text should be spoken when
195 Dasher is stopped. Requires --with-speech to have been used
196 during Dasher configuration and building.
197 Pause outside window
200 Toggle whether Dasher pauses if the mouse cursor is moved out‐
201 side the Dasher window
202 View
205 Orientation
206 Change the relative position of the letters to the crosshairs.
207 Alphabet Default will allow alphabets to set this automatically.
208 Show toolbar
211 Toggle whether or not the row of buttons at the top of the win‐
212 dow is displayed
213 Show speed slider
216 Toggle whether or not the speed slider at the bottom of the win‐
217 dow is displayed
218 Show mouse position
221 Toggle whether Dasher should draw a box showing the logical
222 position of the mouse cursor
223 Draw line between crosshairs and mouse
226 Toggle whether Dasher should draw a line between the crosshairs
227 and the logical mouse position
228 Draw box outlines
231 Toggle whether Dasher should draw a box outline around every box
232 it draws
233 Change colour scheme automatically
236 Alphabets may provide a preferred colour scheme. If this option
237 is enabled, Dasher will automatically change to it.
238 Advanced
241 Smoothing
242 The greater the smoothing value, the greater the uniformity of
243 the box sizes. This will reduce the predictive capabilities of
244 Dasher, and so may reduce writing speed.
245 Timestamp new files
248 Include the time at which a file is saved in the filename
249 Distance from centreline for start on mouse position
252 Controls the distance from the centre of the Dasher screen that
253 the mouse position start boxes will appear.
254 Number of pixels that should cover the entire y range
257 Controls how many pixels of input should correspond to complete
258 coverage of the Dasher canvas. Only used in one dimensional
259 mode.
260
263 Dasher requires that training files be in the UTF-8 format, whereas
264 most text files are likely to be in ISO-8859 format. This doesn't mat‐
265 ter for plain text, but accented characters are encoded differently. In
266 order to convert them, use the iconv(1) program. For instance, if your
267 training file is in ISO-8859-1 format (Western European), run
268 iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 trainingfile >newtrainingfile
270
273 /usr/share/dasher/
274 System-wide configuration files
275 ~/.dasher
276 User configuration files
277 dasher will utilise data from both of these directories. Training texts
279 from both will be used, allowing users to add their own training data
280 to the system wide data
281 alphabet*.xml
283 The files defining the alphabets available to Dasher
284 colour*.xml
285 The files defining the colour schemes available to Dasher
286 train*txt
287 Files containing the training data used by Dasher. These are
288 UTF-8 encoded text and should contain a representative sample of
289 the relevant language.
290
293 The Dasher Project <dasher@mrao.phy.cam.ac.uk> - http://www.infer‐
294 ence.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/
2954.4.2 January 2004 DASHER(1)