[MUD-Dev] Reactive keyboard

[J C Lawrence]

Think of this for a command line or user shell:

  ftp://ftp.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/pub/Redirect/rk/
  ftp://ftp.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/pub/Redirect/rk/00-intro.txt

--<cut>--

The Reactive Keyboard is a family of text input and editing programs
that have the added feature of predictive text generation.  They
provide an alternative means of generating text to the conventional
keyboard.  Wherever possible they attempt to predict what the user
is going to type next.  RK is described in J.J. Darragh,
I.H. Witten, and M.L. James, "The Reactive Keyboard: A predictive
typing aid," IEEE Computer, Vol. 23, No. 11, pp. 41-49, November
1990; and in the comprehensive new book called, "The Reactive
Keyboard" (see below).

...

To enable the Reactive Keyboard to make predictions, a model of
previously entered text is created and maintained adaptively.  This
model contains a large number of recurring selection element
sequences (n-grams) with associated occurrence frequencies.  In
prediction, this model, along with the current context, is used to
determine likely continuations.  The basic idea is to order
context-conditioned candidate strings, which are predicted by the
model, according to popularity and display them for selection.  Each
prediction starts with a different ASCII character, so that the
entire character set can always be accessed.  A menu interface
allows the user to accept all or part of any prediction.  Accepted
predictions appear to the editor as if the user had typed them in
himself.

Obviously predictions are not always correct, but they are correct
often enough to form the basis of a useful communication device.
Since they are created adaptively, based on what the user has
already typed in this session or in previous ones, the system
conforms to whatever kind of text is being entered.  Prediction
accuracy improves continually as the user history accumulates.

(See also the abstracts in /pub/rk/papers/reports.txt -- and buy the
book! :-)
--<cut>--

--
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                               Other: coder at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/        Keys etc: finger claw at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--


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