Comparative Review of Text Completion Software

General Overview

A Text Completion Software is a kind of software that tries to "suggest" words or phrases that you are trying to graffiti. While Windows CE users have such capabilities with Jot (from CIC) and it’s auto-completion options, Palm users have to choose from some other not so integrated choices. In this review, I pick out three different options for users and give them all a test run. They are LookDA 2.5, TextPlus 3.0 and WordComplete 1.0. Incidentally, WordComplete is from CIC, the makers of Jot. Just for your reference, they were run on a Palm V8 with about 5 hacks and 5 more Desk Accessories (DAs) running at the same time. I tested their capabilities with various applications like the built-in apps, SmartDoc, MemoPlus and so on.

As I mentioned, each application is not fully integrated with the system like Jot on CE is, and as such, you have a few issues to think about. Firstly, if you use graffiti echo software, screen refresh problems will be something you will have to live with. Secondly, they take up valuable memory space to store the word lists. Thirdly, no text completion software is going to give you perfect results right off the bat. Although with the frequency suggestion capabilities of TextPlus and WordComplete, it will slowly "learn" your favourite words as you use it. All three softwares allow you to configure the length of words to suggest, how many letters you graffiti before they suggest a word, configure your own dictionary of words and phrases and where and how many suggested words or pharases are displayed.

Text completion software is something you should consider if you graffiti a lot on yor palm, and want to have a faster way of entering words and phrases. My recommendation is to look at the graffiti shortcuts option in your Palm before considering any of text completion software. There are in fact many other choices out there, other than these three, like NoteTaker 1.3, SpellCheck, SpellMan, Thesaurus 1.11 and WordList. You may also want to try them if you’re interested (I did!).

Product Discussion - LookDA 2.5

LookDA has a simple display system for suggested words. They are displayed at the bottom of your screen and you can choose between a one-line or a two-line display. Each line can show up to three suggestions. Furthermore, it allows you to configure your graffiti up-stroke to display a pop-up list of user-configurable word/phrase lists. Thus, you can graffiti the letter "K" and do an up-stroke and display all your own defined words and phrases starting with the letter "K". The fun doesn’t stop there, because you can define "auto-attachments". For example, when you graffiti "vehi" and complete "vehicle" it adds a space at the end to make "vehicle ". Graffiti an "s" and you get "vehicle s" which is not quite what you want. Auto-attach allows you to configure it such that whenever LookDA sees a " s" it will automatically remove the space, giving you "vehicles". This auto-attachment feature works not just for single letters, but also for things like " ,", " ed", " !" or whatever suits your fancy! LookDA not only allows you to enter words into its custom database by Learning or Forgetting individual words, but also allows you to scan an entire document or memo with 5 or more characters to be automatically entered. LookDA even allows you to configure which applications you do not want LookDA to be active. By far, one of the biggest bonuses of LookDA is it only requires a measly 30K!

However, I find that the initial databases that are provided for you are very rudimentary and do not have enough words and phrases to get you started. It’s a bit like the first few voice-recognition software that came out. You have to spend some time "training" (and configuring) it before it starts to do things the way you want it to. None of the " s" or " ," auto-attachments are "pre-defined" for you, so you’ll have to do it yourself. Well, I suppose that 30K size thing has something to do with it. Furthermore, you need hackmaster and the accompanied eLook Hack to run this software across all applications. DA Launcher can do it, but not automatically in all text entry fields. In addition, LookDA uses its own menu when it is suggesting words. To get to your application’s menu, you have to first tap the title bar, then tap menu. For those of us with hacks that define the title bar to bring up the menu, you end up having to tap the title-bar twice. But this is only true if LookDA is not suggesting a word. Or if it has suggested a word, but you have moved on. And if you have already… Confusing? Yep.

Product Discussion - TextPlus 3.0

TextPlus is different from the other two in that you can use it in two different ways - as a standalone editor editing the clipboard, or in a global "TextPlus Anywhere" mode. You can of course use both if you so choose. The standalone program also allows you to key in and remove words and phrases from the database. One interesting feature of TextPlus is the fact that you can create more than one database of words. For example, you can have one database for French, another for German and a third for English. Thus, you can simply switch between databases when you need to write in a different language. Another important note is that it also makes suggestions to words when you do a backspace. For example, if you key in "Compl" and choose "Complete" then backspace to get "Comp", it will immediately suggest "Computer". TextPlus will suggest words and phrases together, or words only, or phrases only, according to your settings. In addition, it can also give you statistics about the word and phrase databases. The biggest downside to TextPlus is that it uses a whopping 180K to start. Another slight problem I have is that all the words it suggests in the beginning are in alphabetical order, not according to frequency of use. Although TextPlus will "learn" the frequency of words and eventually adapt to your personal needs, I think a predefined set of frequencies to start would have been quite useful.

Product Discussion - WordComplete 1.0

CIC, who makes Jot and the auto-completion software for the CE platform, has decided to do something similar with WordComplete. My question is why they didn’t offer a bundled option (read: integrated version) with Jot for Palm (which they also have). Perhaps the developers have not reached that stage yet. WordComplete is a very easy to use program. Just hotsync it, tap on "Enable WordComplete" and choose the settings you want and off you go. You can then double-tap words to add (or forget) from its own database. It’s suggestions also seems to be the best, since it seems to make suggestions with built-in frequencies already pre-set and thus requires almost no learning time at all (so to speak). From the WordComplete screen, you can also edit the custom database as well is a very easy to use interface.

On the other hand, the biggest problem is the screen refresh. Every time you backspace and try to write something, it gives you this problem. After a while, it becoms quite annoying. CIC’s Technical Support Forums have suggested to remove your graffiti echo software as a solution. Well, I’ll leave it to you if you find that solution acceptable or not. Furthermore, it does not have any phrases installed by default, so you’ll have to graffiti in your own. I suppose this partly explains why it’s smaller than TextPlus.

Pros and Cons

LookDA is free and highly confugurable to meet almost everyone’s concievable needs, but it requires a fair bit of work to get it to the point where you are happy with it. This high "set-up" cost may be quite a deterrent. It would have been better if Millman had provided a better initial database with some basic english and punctuation "auto-attaches" already included. Furthermore, it requires you to run Hackmaster, which may (or may not) pose a resource issue.

TextPlus has the best screen refresh of the three of them, and the ability to suggest words even when you backspace into a word is a definate plus point. After all, we’re not perfect right? It also seperates phrases from words and suggests from either or both, so you can use it where you need it most. And that multiple database thing is a boon for multi-lingual people, as long as you write with roman alphabets at least! The bad point is that it takes up so much space, and does require some use before it gets used to the "frequency" of words and starts giving better suggestions.

WordComplete is much easier to use than the other two and has better suggestions than the others. For beginners, this is a very important thing. You can install, activate and find it useful right away. Unfortunately, it’s the most expensive of the lot, and the screen refresh is a real pain.

Conclusion

All of three software have some screen refresh problems with "screen manipulation software" (read: graffiti echo), but TextPlus has the least and WordComplete has the most problems. LookDA seemed to cause a bit of slowdown when using a graffiti shortcut. Although the others did have some performance issue with that, it was most obvious with LookDA. But if you are worried about performance problems, just try Afterburner or some other over-clocking software for the Palm (something CE devices can’t do). As for Flash memory, WordComplete seems to be flash compatible, but I’m not too sure about TextPlus and LookDA. In the final analysis, each of them cater to a slightly different audience. If you are short of cash or want control of your text entry at a very customised or detailed level, LookDA is the best and only choice for you. Pick LookDA also if you you are so short of space on your palm that you can hardly breathe. If you are an absolute beginner, and can’t tell a graffiti "v" from a graffiti "u", then you may want to consider either WordComplete or TextPlus. Finally, if you want value for money, and can see yourself using it in the long run, take a close look at TextPlus. Especially if you have memory to fit it in.

Summary:

Review: Comparison of three leading text completion software
Review Date: November 22, 1999
Available from: Most leading Palm Software site (eg http://www.PalmGear.com)

Software 1: LookDA 2.5
Developer: C. S. Millman
Developer Home Page: http://member.nifty.ne.jp/yamakado/da/
Price: Free
Requirements: Palm OS 2.x and above, at least 30K and Hackmaster

Software 2: TextPlus 3.0
Developer: SmartCell Technology
Developer Home Page: http://www.smartcell.com
Price: US$ 19.95 (14 day demo available)
Requirements: Palm OS 2.x and above, at least 180K

Software 3: WordComplete 1.0
Developer: Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC)
Developer Home Page: http://www.cic.com
Price: US$ 24.99 (5 day demo available)
Requirements: Palm OS 2.x and above, at least 120K

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