Home
Welcome to MouseTyper
Download MouseTyper at
MouseTyper has about 4 types of use:
1. A typing device for the physically handicapped, using a mouse, head pointer or other similar device.
2. A typing device for people who cannot type using a querty or azerty keyboard.
3. A device for writing in a foreign language, with recourse to a local fast online dictionary as and when required.
4. A language teaching assistant (as (3) above).
In some ways it duplicates the functionality of the Windows On-Screen Keyboard (Programs/ Accessories/ Accessibility/ On-Screen Keyboard),
but it does not use querty or azerty key layout, and it utilises a 70,000 word dictionary with word frequency
count to assist in reaching the required word with the minimum number of mouseclicks...
MouseTyper is written in C#, with a local Access 2000 Database. It includes dictionaries and typing systems for
German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. The Access database is not passworded or encrypted, so you can
add your own phrases and common words to tailor the product to your own requirements. And you can run MouseTyper against
text or htm files of your own choosing and/or creation, so that its predictive word search facility is optimised for
the words and phrases you use - this for example can be made effectively into a legal system, a medical authoring system or
whatever...
There are tool-tips on about 50% of the buttons and lists which explain what you have to do; otherwise it is
pretty intuitive. Note that you can use it direct without word prediction by ticking the DIRECT box; and
note that there are 2 language selection radio box groups - the top one decides what your INPUT language is, and
the bottom one decides what your OUTPUT language is - i.e. you can use this as a primitive translator (but the result isnt
great - better to use the inbuilt translator in Word or similar) - let us say you are a native French speaker
writing some document in German - you can set both radios to German and then switch the top one to French briefly to
do a quick search for a word you dont know or are unsure of... - and then both back to German to continue....
MouseTyper is free, not because it is some cheap rubbish - it isnt. The C# code and/or components for MouseTyper may be made
available to developers on request. The database contents at the moment are excessive - my apologies - easier to
include a lot of extraneous stuff than to miss out something important.... I am open to feedback and collaboration
for future versions of MouseTyper.
Below is some stuff I wrote in 1999 which gives some of the background and useage...
Best regards
Mr Alex Weir
20 April 2006
Email Contact
MOUSE TYPING DEVICE FOR DISABLED AND/OR CEREBRAL PALSY SUFFERERS AND/OR EXECUTIVES WHO CANNOT TYPE
I developed a 1995 a mouse or headpointing software for typing using a computer - ideal for Cerebral Palsy sufferers who have problems using voice recognition.
I conceived it around 1995 when i saw barney greenland a paraplegic lawyer in bulawayo Zimbabwe africa with a pen in his mouth typing by hitting the keyboard.
I wrote several versions at that time, using clipper, visual basic 3 and delphi 1
I tried to disseminate it by contacting organisations in zimbabwe, uk and usa,
but got pretty well nowhere
The product works like this:
You have 3 windows - a-z window (AZW) , common word window (CWW), and the text creation window (TCW)
the common word window has the 100 most common words (or phrases) which are used in the language operational (i.e. probably english)
if the word you want is there you locate with the pointer and click - that word or phrase goes onto the end of whatever is in the text creation window (TCW).
if not you choose the first letter from AZW, immediately the CWW changes to show the 100 most common words starting with that letter. (always in alphabetical sequence)
if the word you want is there you locate with the pointer and click - that word or phrase goes onto the end of whatever is in the text creation window (TCW).
if not choose the SECOND letter from AZW, immediately the CWW changes to show the 100 most common words starting with those TWO letters. etc etc etc...
the text is automatically put into clipboard and can be pasted into any word or email document
it would be nice to integrate the system fully with email and with the users email address book to make all that stuff easier
could also be integrated with a text-to-voice system so as to enable user to 'SPEAK"
I have tested and reckon 15 words per minute is a normal rate of text production (depends also on spelling capability of user!, but helps a lot with the spelling anyway...)
system can also accept new words to be input
system can scan through documents and automatically add new words , and it can also be requested to recalculate the commonality of words for the CWW. We could probably build in some stuff so that if several users are using one computer their own commonality settings can be used (like a car with 5 or 10 automatic driver adjustments).
Alex Weir 27 December 1999
Contacts:
Email Contact