-o

Dasher will appear without a text edit box and will default to entering text into other windows.

-p

Dasher will open a preferences window and not the main window.

-s

Dasher will output the entered text to stdout whenever stopped. Only text entered since the last stop will be output.

-w

Whenever Dasher is stopped, the time taken, number of characters entered, and number of bits of information will be displayed, along with ratios of these quantities.

New

Restore Dasher to the state it was in when started

Open

Read a text file into the Dasher edit box for further editting

Save

Save the contents of the Dasher edit box to a file

Save as

Save the contents of the Dasher edit box to a file chosen by the user

Append to file

Add the contents of the Dasher edit box to the end of a file chosen by the user

Import training text

Use a file to further train Dasher (for instance, a training file containing scientific terms to add to the initial English training). Training files must be UTF-8 encoded.

Exit

Quit Dasher

Cut

Remove the highlighted text from the edit box and copy it to the clipboard

Copy

Copy the highlighted text from the edit box to the clipboard but don't remove it

Paste

Paste the contents of the clipboard into the edit box at the position of the cursor

Copy all

Copy the entire contents of the edit box to the clipboard

Select all

Highlight all of the text in the edit box

Preferences

Opens the preferences dialog (see THE PREFERENCES DIALOG below)

Edit font

Choose the font used in the edit box

Dasher font

Choose the font used in the Dasher canvas

Dasher font size

Choose the size of the font used in the Dasher canvas

Reset fonts

Reset the fonts back to the defaults

Enter text into other windows

Make Dasher enter text into the currently focused window. Requires Dasher to have been built with Note that some languages will only work correctly if XFree 4.0.2 or higher is being used.

Control mode

Provides a control node at the bottom of the screen. This allows various tasks to be performed inside Dasher, such as editing the text written, speaking entered text and stopping or pausing Dasher. If compiled with and using a desktop supporting the ATK accessibility framework, compliant applications will have their menu trees exported to Dasher and these may be accessed via this node.

About Dasher

Display information about the current version of Dasher

The preferences dialog is split into several panes.

Alter various control options

One dimensional mode

Map the Y position of the mouse to a 2 dimensional position on the Dasher canvas (useful for limited mobility users)

Eyetracker mode

Similar to one dimensional mode, but behaves normally except at the right-hand side of the canvas. Designed for eyetracker users.

Start on left mouse button

The left mouse button will toggle Dasher between running and paused state

Start on space bar

The space bar will toggle Dasher between running and paused state

Start with mouse position

When paused, Dasher will display a red box. If the pointer is held in the red box until a yellow box appears, and then in the yellow box until it vanishes, Dasher will start. This allows users with no button input to start and stop Dasher.

Copy all on stop

Toggle whether the current text is automatically copied to the clipboard when Dasher is stopped

Speak on stop

Toggle whether the newly entered text should be spoken when Dasher is stopped. Requires --with-speech to have been used during Dasher configuration and building.

Pause outside window

Toggle whether Dasher pauses if the mouse cursor is moved outside the Dasher window

Orientation

Change the relative position of the letters to the crosshairs. Alphabet Default will allow alphabets to set this automatically.

Show toolbar

Toggle whether or not the row of buttons at the top of the window is displayed

Show speed slider

Toggle whether or not the speed slider at the bottom of the window is displayed

Show mouse position

Toggle whether Dasher should draw a box showing the logical position of the mouse cursor

Draw line between crosshairs and mouse

Toggle whether Dasher should draw a line between the crosshairs and the logical mouse position

Draw box outlines

Toggle whether Dasher should draw a box outline around every box it draws

Change colour scheme automatically

Alphabets may provide a preferred colour scheme. If this option is enabled, Dasher will automatically change to it.

Smoothing

The greater the smoothing value, the greater the uniformity of the box sizes. This will reduce the predictive capabilities of Dasher, and so may reduce writing speed.

Timestamp new files

Include the time at which a file is saved in the filename

Distance from centreline for start on mouse position

Controls the distance from the centre of the Dasher screen that the mouse position start boxes will appear.

Number of pixels that should cover the entire y range

Controls how many pixels of input should correspond to complete coverage of the Dasher canvas. Only used in one dimensional mode.

Dasher requires that training files be in the UTF-8 format, whereas most text files are likely to be in ISO-8859 format. This doesn't matter for plain text, but accented characters are encoded differently. In order to convert them, use the iconv(1) program. For instance, if your training file is in ISO-8859-1 format (Western European), run

iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 trainingfile >newtrainingfile

/usr/share/dasher/

System-wide configuration files

User configuration files

dasher will utilise data from both of these directories. Training texts from both will be used, allowing users to add their own training data to the system wide data

alphabet*.xml

The files defining the alphabets available to Dasher

The files defining the colour schemes available to Dasher

Files containing the training data used by Dasher. These are UTF-8 encoded text and should contain a representative sample of the relevant language.

The Dasher Project <dasher@mrao.phy.cam.ac.uk> - http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/