Get it now from the download page
Wed 27/11/02: Version 3 is now released for Windows and Linux. You can download it from the Dasher download page. Windows versions for (windows NT, windows 2000, windows XP) and (windows 95-98) are available.
Version 3 is a complete rewrite of Dasher. It should have all the key features of version 1.6.8, and is intended to be far more development-friendly. One of its new features, which we expect many users will appreciate, is the "automatic copy" option, which has the effect of copying the written text into the cut'n'paste buffer whenever dasher is stopped. (Enable this option using the menus.)
Version 3.0.0 prerelease 2 supports several English alphabets. Support for other languages will follow soon. Portuguese is the first language in the queue.
Further information about Dasher version 3
A port to ipaq-running-linux is also being made by Hanna Wallach.
Version 3 was written by David Ward, Iain Murray, Phil Cowans, and Matthew Garrett.
Feedback on version 3 should be sent via the metafaq system please, or else by email to dasher-at-mrao.cam.ac.uk.
Tue 1/10/02:
cliffn has written a front end for dasher v1.6.8 in VB5 which allows to run
Dasher, allows one click to save the text into a file, and
allows the file to be read aloud. With a shortcut to the text file
on your desktop it is easy to edit and copy and paste to another app.
Tested only on Win 2000 but available for download with a right click
on the file name (StartDasherFS.exe) from:
www.datasolutions.co.nz/Download;
this exe file should be put in the dasher folder alongside dasher.exe.
9/02: This text file gives Margaret Cotts's instructions for using Macro Express to connect Dasher 1.6.8 to etriloquist, and further information submitted by other users.
EndPage Alias WhatsNew3.html HiddenPage What's new - Dasher version 3 latest
If you have previously installed another release of version 3, then The windows 2000 version starts and shows nothing but a green square. To fix this, Click options->alphabet, and select any alphabet except "?", then click OK.
Proper documentation about alphabets will be provided in the future. Meanwhile, here are some notes from Iain, and from a user who has figured it out!
Dasher stores
new alphabets and looks for user training files in:
Documents and Settings\
[Earlier versions of windows simply put dasher.rc in the \Program Files\Dasher directory - giving all users the same settings.]
This makes cleaning out test versions of Dasher and hacking the alphabet file directory hard, as it may not be an obvious place to look. However, it is how Windows apps are supposed to behave. Dasher makes an API call to ask where to save this data; it isn't just making this path up.
People wanting to hack the alphabet file directly will probably find it fairly obvious (once they've found the file!).They'll need a text editor that can deal with UNIX text file format. (Not notepad, but anything decent should do.) Otherwise the file will lose its line breaks and be hard to read.
XML purists might want to consult alphabets.dtd for the formal specification.
Others may need to be reminded to use UTF-8 encoding if they use anything outside ASCII.
I am not sure all international issues have yet been fixed - so people creating alphabets may still run into problems.
"I want numerals!" - You can use numbers right now. AFAIK, you can edit the file alphabet.xml to include any of the basic 7 Bit ASCII characters.
If you want to, you can download a modified alphabet definition. It provides an additional alphabet named "mixed limited +nums". This does two things in addition to the standard "english/limited" alphabet:
- it provides numbers
- it arranges small/capital letters beneath each other, which was optional in dasher 1.68.
The location to put this will depend on your OS.