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As regular Applelinks readers know, I struggle with typing pain caused by peripheral neuropathy and fibromyalgia. I use several workarounds in coping with this disability, including dictation software, a variety of hand and foot operated pointing devices, and I pick my production keyboards carefully.

Keystrokes is an on-screen virtual keyboard that I’ve been using off and on for several years, since back when it was a freeware demo with limited functionality. It has helped get me through some rough periods, and has evolved into a very useful little helpware (or “assistive software”) application for Mac users with disabilities.

The latest version of Keystrokes is 3.0, and it is a much more powerful application than that old freeware demo was, allowing users to type with a mouse, trackball, head pointer or other mouse emulator to type characters into any standard Macintosh application. But that’s just the basic function.

KeyStrokes also now provides advanced multilingual word prediction. Thanks to its PolyPredix word prediction engine it can do word completion, next word prediction and even multi-word prediction in any Roman language as well as many other languages. The PolyPredix prediction engine offers several time and effort saving features allowing significantly easier and faster typing.

For users who can position the pointer, but not click the mouse buttons, the integrated Dwellix system-wide dwell-based utility allows mouse button clicks to be entered by simply holding the cursor motionless for a programmable period of time. You can even type without clicking.

While Keystrokes 3.0 supports both OS X and OS 9, in Mac OS X KeyStrokes also provides SmartTransparency technology to provide you with an optimum use of your screen real-estate and make sure the virtual keyboard never gets in your way.

If you’re already familiar with an earlier version of KeyStrokes, new features in version 3 include:

• PolyPredix, an advanced word prediction engine that can do word completion, next word prediction and even multi-word prediction in any Roman language as well as many other languages.
• Learns your vocabulary as you type or through text files, and on Mac OS X learned text can even be spell-checked automatically to prevent learning typos.
• A powerful dictionary editor to edit user dictionaries or even design dictionaries for additional languages or dialects.
• Various visual and audio-feedback features including speaking what you type (for English only).
• Configurable auto-spacing and auto-capitalization features for a number of languages.
• New powerful shortcut expansion features.
• Dwellix, an advanced, system-wide, dwelling solution to click and type without pushing the mouse button.

Returning good stuff includes:
• SmartTransparency technology to automatically show and hide the keyboard as needed (OS X only)

The Keystrokes 3 product also includes a copy of KeyStrokes 2.2 for use on older machines running Mac OS 7.1 and up.

KeyStrokes offers five, fully resizable, keyboard configurations: block, standard, standard with numeric pad, extended and extended with numeric pad. Here are the latter two, which are the ones I find most useful. You can also customize the keyboard appearance with two Aqua themes or a Snow theme (shown).

The Keyboard Menu allows you to select one of the standard keyboard sizes, show or hide the keyboard, show or hide the keyboard window toolbar and toggle between the small and the large toolbar. The keyboards are also infinitely resizable by dragging the lower right corner, allowing you to give them any size and proportion you desire. You can change the default QWERTY keyboard layout to DVORAK or a foreign layout using the Mac OS keyboard menu.

With the toolbar of the keyboard window you can perform a number of
common actions.

Both the typing field and prediction area are optional parts of
the KeyStrokes keyboard that can be turned on and off through the Keyboard menu. The typing field shows the letters and words as you type, allowing you to focus on the keyboard and reducing the need to look at your document while typing, requiring fewer eye movements and enhancing typing speed.

The prediction area shows the words and phrases the KeyStrokes prediction engine thinks you might want to type. As you type, the prediction engine adjusts its suggestions with each key you type. You can configure how many items will be suggested, how much space is reserved between items, the text size used, and so forth, through the KeyStrokes preferences. To type one of the suggestions simply click on it. This feature speeds things up substantially. Various prediction dictionaries my be selected using the buttons to the left of the field. If you want KeyStrokes to learn new words and phrases as you type, you must select one of these dictionaries for learning. The active learning dictionary will be marked with a check mark. Only one dictionary can be used for learning at a time. On the far right there is a button with a cogwheel icon which toggles automation. When automation is on the auto-type features (affecting spacing and capitalization) are active.

The prediction window shares the controls on the keyboard plus has one additional button labeled with a ‘+’. Using this button you can, depending on whether the Text or Shortcuts tab is active, add respectively words and shortcuts to the current learning dictionary. The prediction window provides a vertical prediction list that can be placed anywhere on the screen and be resized as needed. The prediction and keyboard windows can snap together if you move them near to each other. When that happens you can move both windows at the same time by dragging just the keyboard window.

KeyStrokes also has powerful shortcut features similar to those employed in macro autotype applications like TypeIt4Me, allowing you to couple a short abbreviation (macro) to a longer piece of frequently used text. For example, you could have an abbreviation “homea” expand to your full home address.

Keystrokes Prediction and Shortcuts are a powerful, customizable, and highly configurable features with too many nuances to more than outline in this review. The comprehensive PDF format manual provides full details. The manual may be downloaded from the AssistiveWare Website.

KeyStrokes 3’s Dwellix feature provides advanced system-wide dwelling, which allows you to click, double click, right-click, drag, and type simply by holding the cursor motionless for a programmable period of time. Most of the dwelling features are accessible from the keyboard toolbar, but there is also a separate Dwellix toolbar window which conveniently groups the most common dwell features.

The Dwellix window can be configured through the KeyStrokes preferences to display only those buttons that you need so as to occupy the minimum amount of screen space.

The Dwellix function works quite well once you get the hang of it. This is the sort of thing that becomes progressively more efficient with practice, but I got onto it, albeit still clumsily within a few minutes of experimentation. The dwell delay interval can be set with a slider controls in the Preferences dialog. The default is 1.5 seconds, which I find about right for learning with. As one becomes more skilled in using Keystrokes’ dwell feature, one might want to shorten the delay, while for some types of work, a longer dwell interval might be appropriate.

The practical joke potential of this application also occurs. You could really rattle someone’s cage by sitting some unsuspecting soul down at your computer with Keystrokes dwell turned on but the application hidden. The computer would appear to have developed a mind of its own. There is also Simple Mode, which allows you to fix several keyboard properties such as keyboard size and keyboard location. Simple Mode can also block certain keys or key combinations, typically used for such things as touch screen kiosks. Another application is when you want to ensure that a child or student only works with the standard keyboard and does not push any of the toolbar buttons.

If you want to use Dwellix only for typing and manipulating KeyStrokes and not for clicking in the document you are working on you can set “Only dwell on KeyStrokes’ floating windows” in the KeyStrokes preferences.

In Mac OS X, KeyStrokes offers an Invade Fullscreen Mode from the Mode menu. If the KeyStrokes windows get hidden behind a fullscreen window you can try to use this mode to force KeyStrokes’ floating windows to show above the full screen window that is obscuring them in the regular mode. This works for some Apple and third party applications including certain games.

the SmartTransparency feature makes the keyboard, prediction and Dwellix windows visible when you need them and transparent when not in use. As soon as you move your cursor over the window the transparency is removed and the window is ready for use. To prevent flashing, there is a customizable gradual transition between transparent and non-transparent states. This is very cool, and I found it especially useful on the not overly roomy 12.1" screen of my iBook , allowing me to see icons and open documents behind the KeyStrokes floating windows.

This application has gained more polish and useful functionality with each version release, and KeyStrokes 3 is now a powerful and versatile suite of tools that will prove a boon to any Mac user who has difficulty with conventional typing, and could mean the difference between computing and not computing for more seriously disabled folks. I found that the program works well on my iBook running OS 10.2.6, and does what it’s advertised to do efficiently and gracefully.

According to David Niemeijer, Niemeijer Consult’s CTO: “Our tests show that thanks to the revolutionary PolyPredix word prediction engine users are actually able to type up to several times as fast with just a fraction of the effort. For Mac users with disabilities it can revolutionize their communication with the outside world.”

The only real downside to KeyStrokes 3 that I can see is the price, which is a hefty US$/Euro 250, although special introductory pricing is being offered until September 30 2003. Until then, registered users of any other on-screen keyboard can upgrade to KeyStrokes 3 for US$/Euro 175 , while first-time users pay US$/Euro 225 . Finally, KeyStrokes 3 is provided as a free upgrade for registered users of KeyStrokes 1.5.

I queried David Niemeijer about the price issue, and he explained:

“Yes, that is a very good question and we have given a lot of thought to the pricing issue.

“The price increase is based on our experience with KeyStrokes 2. We offered it at a very affordable price of US$45, but found that only a small proportion of the users of the freeware version 1.2 were upgrading to the new version despite of the many new and improved features (such as word prediction, improved typing speed, PPC native support, etc.). At the same time we experienced (through e-mails we received) that a large part of our potential users were not able to buy our product because they were either unable to order online (individual people with disabilities) or not allowed to order online (schools and other organizations). Also, in certain European countries (and perhaps elsewhere as well) the assistive technology market is highly institutionalized whereby insurance companies have deals with just a handful of firms and organizations that are the only ones who may supply assistive technology to people with disabilities at the expense of their insurers. Being a small firm and a relative newcomer in this field we could, for these countries, thus not sell to people with disabilities in a way that would allow them to get back the money from their insurance. In fact, in many cases these specialized firms the insurers work with try to move people with disabilities over to the Windows platform unless they are really hardcore graphic artists that insist on using the Mac.

“Altogether, it turned out impossible to sell enough copies to cover our development costs. As we did get a lot of enthusiastic responses from users claiming that this was the least obtrusive and best on-screen keyboard they had ever used, it was clear that there was a serious demand for KeyStrokes. We therefore decided to continue development but to abandon the Internet-only distribution model. As an immediate consequence prices had to go up to cover the additional costs of preparing CDs and to allow for sufficient margins for distributors and dealers.”

Fair enough, and of course, David Niemeijer has every right to charge whatever he determines is appropriate for the fruit of his programming labors

I’m going to give Keystrokes X two Applelinks ratings -- one price dependent and the other price independent.

Price independent, I’ll give it a full, 5-A Applelinks rating. It works well, does what it’s advertised to do, and there’s nothing else available with the mouse dwell function.

However, price-dependent, I’m dropping it back to a 4-A rating.

System requirements:
• Requires Mac OS 9 or higher or Mac OS X 10.1.3 or higher, but includes a license for KeyStrokes 2 for use on older machines running Mac OS 7.1 and up.

• Requires a minimal screen resolutions of 800 x 600 pixels and at least 10 MB of free memory. For optimum performance and access to all features Mac OS X 10.2 is recommended.

For more information, visit:
http://www.assistiveware.com/keystrokes.php

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear