Windows Phone Thoughts: Stand Up and Be Recognized! Calligrapher v7.3 by PhatWare Reviewed

Keyboards


Figure 13: Oops, now I forgot a comma…

I want to insert a comma after the word "so" in the last line. One thing I have learned with Calligrapher is that it relies on the relative position of letters and symbols to figure out what you’re writing. What this means is that it’s often difficult to enter punctuation marks by themselves, because without entered words to which to compare them, they’re often recognized incorrectly. For example, if you try to enter a left parenthesis by itself, Calligrapher usually recognizes it as a "C".

Anyway, in order to insert the comma that I missed, the easiest way is to pull up the mini keyboard shown in Figure 13. To do so, you can make the correction gesture on blank space or tap on the smaller keyboard icon (the one with the blue stylus) on the toolbar.


Figure 14: Ask not what your keyboard can do for you…

Once the keyboard is up, I just tap the comma and I’m ready to go. You don’t even have to go to the trouble of closing the keyboard window, because the mini keyboard is designed to automatically close after you tap on a key. If you need to input multiple symbols, just tap on the pushpin icon and it will stay open until you close it.


Figure 15: Calligrapher’s dictionary is a bit light on Middle-Earth terminology.

What happens if you’re trying to enter a word that’s so strange that Calligrapher has no idea what to translate it into? This can happen with acronyms, jargon such as medical or scientific terminology, or a foreign language such as Elvish. As you may recognize, Calligrapher didn’t recognize part of the name for the Elvish delicacy, Lembas bread.


Figure 16: "Oh yes, lovely. Lembas bread. And look! More Lembas bread!"

You could use the Corrector window, but another option is to use Calligrapher’s full keyboard. Nothing unusual here, just a standard QWERTY keyboard. But one very nice feature is that you can use the keyboard and character recognition together. So if you have a lot of text to input that includes a fair number of "difficult" words, you can leave the keyboard displayed and switch back and forth between it and the character recognition. Very handy!


Figure 17: Save it for your article on Elvish gourmet cuisine.

If you think you’re going to use a "difficult" word frequently, you can add it to your user dictionary, and Calligrapher should recognize it easily next time.

One more keyboard related feature… Calligrapher has a keyboard editor so that you can customize the mini keyboard just to your liking.


Figure 18: More gestures.

I mentioned the correction gesture earlier, but Calligrapher has many more gestures that help with navigation and editing. Figure 18 shows a few of the more common ones, such as Return, Space and Select words. Make sure that the bottom stroke for the space is long, or else Calligrapher recognizes it as a capital L.