Dasher: information-efficient text entry

Google Tech Talks
April 19, 2007

ABSTRACT

Keyboards are inefficient for two reasons: they do not exploit the redundancy in normal language; and they waste the fine analogue capabilities of the user's motor system (fingers and eyes, for example). I describe a system intended to rectify both these inefficiencies. Dasher is a text-entry system in which a language model plays an integral role, and it's driven by continuous gestures. Users can achieve single-finger writing speeds of 35 words per minute and hands-free writing speeds of 25 words per minute. Dasher is free software, and it works in all languages, and on many platforms. Dasher is part of Debian, and there's even a little java version for...

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Howto & Style

Tags:

• google
• howto
• dasher
• information
• efficient

[koCmoC36]

I just love dasher. It's awesome. But I would like to have a guess function for my Lithuanian language. Then it could be the best program for me!

[mcubuntu]

audio tends to desynchronize form the video towards the end of the clip. I wonder if it isn't a general utube problem (since I'd never actually seen such a long clip before).

[hughtub]

Brilliantly efficient. It's just a shame that English is such an imperfect, less than purely logical, language. This certainly does favor the furthered efficiency of language and the weeding out of long synonyms of shorter words.