1dasher(1) User Commands dasher(1)
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7 dasher - graphical predictive text entry system
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10 dasher [OPTIONS] [filename]
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13 Dasher is an information-efficient text-entry interface, driven by nat‐
14 ural continuous pointing gestures. Dasher is a competitive text-entry
15 system wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used.
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18 dasher takes the following options:
19 -a, --appstyle=STYLE
21 Application style. STYLE can be any of traditional, direct,
22 compose, or fullscreen. The default is whatever was specified
23 on the previous invocation of Dasher, or traditional when Dasher
24 is started for the first time.
25 -?, --help
27 Describe command line options.
28 --help-options
30 Describe the options available with --options.
31 -o, --options [option=value[,option=value...]]
33 Override stored options. Options values are remembered for sub‐
34 sequent invocations of Dasher.
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37 The main Dasher interface is a window with a blank background contain‐
38 ing a column of letters on the right hand side. Click the mouse button
39 to start. When the pointer is to the right of the crosshair the screen
40 will zoom towards the point underneath the mouse pointer. To select a
41 letter, move the mouse pointer into it and watch how it zooms under‐
42 neath the crosshair. A new column of letters will appear. Staying
43 within the box for the selected letter, move the pointer over one of
44 these letters to select it as the next letter. Moving the mouse
45 pointer to the left of the crosshair, or outside of the box for previ‐
46 ously selected letters, allows you to change previously selected let‐
47 ters.
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50 traditional
51 Dasher displays an edit box above the main window. Text entered
52 via Dasher will appear in the edit box allowing the text to be
53 edited directly.
54 direct The edit box is not displayed. Dasher runs without focus and
56 the text goes into whatever window does have focus. This way
57 you can use it more practically to run your desktop.
58 fullscreen
63 dasher expands to the entire screen.
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66 File
67 New Clear the edit box and associate a random filename with it.
68 Open Read a text file into the edit box for further editing.
70 Save Save the contents of the edit box to its associated file.
72 Save as
74 Save the contents of the edit box to a selected file.
75 Append to file
77 Add the contents of the edit box to the end of a selected file.
78 Import training text
80 Use a file to further improve Dasher's prediction of the next
81 letters to present (for instance, a training file containing
82 scientific terms to add to the initial English training).
83 Training files must be UTF-8 encoded.
84 Quit Exit Dasher.
86 Edit
88 Cut Remove the highlighted text from the edit box and copy it to the
89 clipboard.
90 Copy Copy the highlighted text from the edit box to the clipboard but
92 don't remove it.
93 Paste Paste the contents of the clipboard into the edit box at the
95 position of the cursor.
96 Copy all
98 Copy the entire contents of the edit box to the clipboard.
99 Select all
101 Highlight all of the text in the edit box.
102 Options
104 Preferences
105 Opens the preferences dialog.
106 Help
137 About Dasher
138 Display information about the current version of Dasher
139
141 The preferences dialog is split into several panes.
142 Alphabet
144 Choose a different alphabet. Dasher will automatically retrain itself
145 if the alphabet specified training file is present.
146 Colour
148 Choose a different colour scheme.
149 Control
151 Alter various control options
152 One dimensional mode
154 Map the Y position of the mouse to a 2 dimensional position on
155 the Dasher canvas (useful for limited mobility users)
156 Eyetracker mode
158 Similar to one dimensional mode, but behaves normally except at
159 the right-hand side of the canvas. Designed for eyetracker
160 users.
161
234 Dasher requires that training files be in the UTF-8 format, whereas
235 most text files are likely to be in ISO-8859 format. This doesn't mat‐
236 ter for plain text, but accented characters are encoded differently. In
237 order to convert them, use the iconv(1) program. For instance, if your
238 training file is in ISO-8859-1 format (Western European), run iconv -f
239 ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 trainingfile >newtrainingfile
240
242 /usr/share/doc/dasher
243 Directory containing system-wide configuration files.
244 ~/.dasher
246 Directory containing user specific configuration files.
247 Dasher will utilise files of the following form from both of these
249 directories:
250 alphabet.ALPHABET.xml
252 The files defining the alphabets available to Dasher.
253 colour.SCHEME.xml
255 The files defining the colour schemes available to Dasher.
256 training_LANGUAGE*.txt
258 Files containing the training data used by Dasher. These are
259 UTF-8 encoded text and should contain a representative sample of
260 the relevant language. User specific training files can be used
261 to augment system wide data.
262 Refer to the Dasher manual for more information regarding the format
264 and editing of these files.
265
267 The Dasher Project <dasher@mrao.phy.cam.ac.uk>.
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270 The Dasher project web page is ⟨http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/
271 dasher/⟩
2725.0.0 2008-02-28 dasher(1)