Writing on small devices, in a fast and natural way

http://www.the8pen.com/index.html

"The 8pen allows for the replacement of the conventional keyboard on all devices capable of detecting gestures, in particular mobile phones with touch screens, modern remote controls or game controllers. Its advantage lies mainly in the fact that it is possible to input text faster than using conventional layouts on small devices, while at the same time mimicking human hand-writing. Moreover, the simplicity of the gestures involved greatly reduces the problem of mistyping that frequently occurs with the classical layout due to the lack of space. For the same reason, it is possible to write without viewing, as only the central region is needed as a reference for starting and ending a movement."



How it works

The basic movement - Producing a character is easy, fast, and feels like hand-writing. Once familiar with the position of the letters, writing can even be done without viewing.

A characters is produced by pressing down in the centre, entering any of the 4 sectors, and then passing through either 1, 2, 3 or 4 adjacent sectors in either clockwise or anti-clockwise direction, before returning to the centre. The order of the letters along the edges, and the side on which they are placed, indicate the number of sectors to be passed through, and the direction of the movement, respectively.

For example, the placement of the letter "a", as the innermost letter on the top edge of the right sector, indicates the associated signature "Centre-Right-Top-Centre", while to the letter "r", the second letter from the centre on the same edge, is associated to the signature "Centre-Right-Top-Left-Centre". Thus words can be entered in a continuous motion; moreover the "space" character is inserted whenever the pointer is released from the centre.

Special and uppercase characters - Special characters, such as é, ø, ß or § are produced almost like the standard ones, but by pausing the movement in the appropriate sector. For uppercase characters, there is a little trick.

Special characters - Some characters, such as "e", "o" or "s" have associated "special" characters, such as "é", "è", ... for "e"; "ó", "ø", ... for "o" and so on. These are obtained by starting the gesture to produce the parent character ("e", "o", "s", ...), but just before returning to the centre, the gesture is paused for a little while in the last sector. Then the special characters will show up, replacing all existing characters, and the gesture can be continued through adjacent sectors to select the appropriate special character, and completed by returning to the centre.

For example, the letter "ö" is obtained by the gesture "Centre-Right-Bottom", then pausing; once the special characters appear, the gesture is reversed to "Right-Top-Centre".

Several punctuation marks are found as special characters associated to the period character. Moreover, common smileys are obtained as special characters associated to the comma character. Many more are found under the numeric keypad.

The delay before special characters are shown can be adjusted in the keyboard preferences.

Uppercase characters - As you would expect, pressing the "Shift" key will turn all the characters into their uppercase version, and pressing it once again, before producing a character, will turn on Caps Lock. However, an alternative way to produce a single uppercase character consists in pressing down a bit harder while performing a gesture. This will turn the keyboard into its shifted state without needing to stop an ongoing gesture.

The pressure threshold can be adjusted in the keyboard preferences.

Custom gestures - Gestures started outside of the central region can be used to quickly produce custom character sequences, such as your name or a commonly used phrase.

Under the 8pen settings, go to the gesture library to store gestures and assign custom character sequences to them, such as your name or a commonly used phrase. Back to the 8pen, a gesture started outside of the central region is compared to the ones you have stored. If recognized, your custom character sequence will be inserted.