[Kde-accessibility] dasher

[Jeff Roush]

On Friday 30 August 2002 06:01, John Tapsell wrote:
> Has anyone looked at using dasher in kde?
>
> It would be cool to be able to type text into a text box by using a
> kde-port-of-dasher.
>
> Can anyone offer suggestions on this please?
>
> Please cc me.
>
> Thanks
> JohnFlux

Yes!  I've taken Dasher for a spin, and it is really cool; as soon as I tried 
it, I wanted to be able to use it to type.  With Dasher and KMouseTool, I 
could click _and_ type without pressing buttons.  Woo hoo!

I haven't emailed any of the Dasher folk, but their website said the source 
would probably be available in September, and I was definitely planning on 
checking it out.

The first modification would be to have Dasher generate keystrokes.

My experience trying to get KMouseTool to generate mouse events was that the X 
Windows function XSendEvent was nearly useless (many applications ignore the 
events it generates), and that you need to use the XTest X extension.  I 
haven't looked at generating key events yet, though.

When I was using Dasher I made a number of mistakes, and often had to back up 
to correct them; it occured to me that having the option to generate complete 
sentences and phrases in Dasher before sending the characters in a batch to 
the target application might make this easier.  This might become a non-issue 
as the user got better and made fewer mistakes, though.  

One thing about generated events: they will go to the window with the focus.  
If clicking on a window sets the focus to that window, then you don't want to 
have to click on the Dasher window to make it send text to another window; 
and it would be nice to not have to click on it to set any controls.   You 
could still have a send-completed-sentence button on Dasher, but it would 
have to either send Dasher into the background before sending the text, or 
use mouse dwell times to let the user press the button without clicking on 
it.  

It would also be nice to be able to easily manage multiple text bases.  Since 
Dasher makes predictions based on the text you've shown it, you'd want to be 
able to move easily between, say, a Bash vocabulary and an email vocabulary.  
A context-aware Dasher might be able to track the window with focus and set 
the vocabulary accordingly.


(This email was typed using the eraser-ends of pencils to minimize strain to 
my fingers.  I can type quickly this way, and it's not as inconvenient as you 
might think, but Dasher would be a very welcome extra option for text input 
for me.)

Jeff