Inference Group: Dasher Project: Tablet PC

Special features of Dasher for the Tablet PC

Tue 29/11/05: Tablet PC version David Ward has got version 4 of Dasher working on the tablet PC.

Here's how David intends the tablet PC version to be used.

Go to the 'Control' Preferences. Please switch OFF the "start on left mouse click" (to avoid accidental taps on the screen stopping Dasher).

Switch ON "stylus" control.

To start Dasher: tap, or tap and hold, or tap and drag the stylus (it's exactly like starting with the Pocket PC - just touch to start).

To stop Dasher, Either DOUBLE TAP on the screen, or Switch on the "stop on idle" option, and use idling to stop.

More about idling: Stop on idle stops when you are exactly stationary, but NOT if the stylus is in contact with the screen. If we can connect to the Tablet API this can be improved by detecting whether the pen is near the screen. I know this stopping mechnism isn't perfect (esp for mouse users), but I found that a time of 1000ms is quite good and rarely got any false stops. To stop, I tend to point somewhere near the centre, and let go straight away.

Tilt control: an additional way that the tablet PC can drive Dasher is via its tilt sensor. The Toshiba Tablet PC has a tilt sensor, and Seb's page about Toshiba tilt sensor provides a tilt utility (with a four-point calibration procedure) that talks to Dasher version 4's socket utility. To use this, start Dasher and start the tilt utility, in either order. Select Preferences->Socket, and check the 'use the socket instead of the mouse' option.

Tablet PCs

Fri 3/9/04 - report by David Ward

The windows version of Dasher works quite nicely on a MS Tablet PC, with no modifications to Dasher.

The pen glides across the screen very nicely and still works with the pen lifted up to 1cm from the screen. I found that my pen frequently lifted from the tablet when using Dasher (unlike PocketPC where it is easier to maintain pressure) so I switched off 'start on tap' and went for 'start on space' instread.

Also, I had to make Dasher no larger than about 12x12cm because of the distance that my hand had to travel.

Typing text into applications works fine -- identically to plain Windows.

Finally, TabletPC has a special input panel (containing character, handwriting recognition and on-screen keyboard) but as far as I can tell, there's no way to add Dasher to the panel.