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Collection: Wide Crawl started April 2013
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This article relies on referencestoprimary sources. (August 2011) |
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 Dasher running under Linux |
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| Developer(s) | The Dasher Project |
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| Stable release | 4.11 / 14 March 2010 |
| Written in | Java, C and C++ |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Computer accessibility |
| License | GPL |
| Website | http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/ |
Dasher is a computer accessibility tool which enables users to write without using a keyboard, by entering text on a screen using a pointing device such as a mouse, a touchpad, a touch screen, a roller ball, a joystick, a Push-button, a Wii Remote, or even mice operated by the foot or head. Such instruments could serve as prosthetic devices for disabled people who cannot use standard keyboards, or where the use of one is impractical.
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Whatever the writer uses as a pointer, he/she selects a letter from ones displayed on a screen, whereupon the system uses a probabilistic predictive model to anticipate the likely character combinations for the next piece of text, and accord these higher priority by displaying them more prominently than less likely letter combinations. This saves the user effort and time as they proceed to choose the next letter from those offered. The process of composing text in this way has been likened to an arcade game, as users zoom through characters that fly across the screen and select them in order to compose text. The system learns from experience which letter combinations are the most popular, and changes its display protocol over time to reflect this.
The Dasher package contains various architecture-independent data files:
Dasher is licensed under the GPL. It is available for several platforms including Mac OS, Microsoft Windows, Pocket PC, and Unix-like operating systems with GTK support.
Dasher was invented by David J. C. MacKay and developed by David Ward and other members of MacKay's Cambridge research group. The Dasher project is supported by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.
David J. C. MacKay (6 October 2003). Information theory, inference, and learning algorithms. Cambridge University Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-521-64298-9. Retrieved 18 December 2011.
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