CalliGrapher 8 is out -- and it rocks

My beloved Toshiba e800 Pocket PC just gets better & better these days, with more sensational software available than I can poke a thulu at.

One PPC-development company, PhatWare, makes a range of fantastic products, including the PhatPad, brilliant for quick scribbled notes & drawings, and PhatNotes, a note-taking and note-managing application. My favourite product of theirs, however, is by far the essential CalliGrapher.

CalliGrapher is predominantly used for handwriting recognition & for that it is simply brilliant -- accurate, fast & highly customisable. However, the program also allows creation of macros for all sorts of things via its PenCommand Scripting Language, giving you user-friendly menus to add in actions such as mouse-clicks, button presses, program & file starting & management, and basically anything else you can think of doing with your PPC.

More new features in version 8 include the WritePad, a supercharged-version of a kinda more traditional-style writing area, and extensions to the AutoCorrector functionality that enable you to use it like I do -- which is not how it was intended, but which I think is superb for speeding up text entry. The AutoCorrector list comes pre-configured with some common spelling mistakes & hard-to-write words that it will fix on-the-fly for you, however, as my spelling ain't too bad, this was a bit useless to me.

So I've been changing my AutoCorrector list into a kinda shorthand list: I write a couple of letters, and AutoCorrector changes them automatically into the word or phrase I've set it to be. For example:

• abt becomes about
• acct becomes account
• acctd becomes accounted
  
• acctg becomes accounting
• etc

I am increasing my AutoCorrector list's vocab daily, and this all ties in with the personal shorthand language I've been using myself for notetaking ever since my school days. Who needs a text entry pad when you can write a whole sentence with just a couple of quick letter combo's!

PhatWare have been beta testing the CalliGrapher software over the last couple of months via a public beta testing program, so I joined this to primarily let them know about my usage of the AutoCorrector, as well as point out a few bugs. (I am a picky wench, which helps for testing stuff!) I expected that would be the end of it for my involvement, however I was ecstatic to be notified that not only have they decided to incorporate some of my suggestions, they were giving me a free copy for my input. Yay!! Thanks, Stan at PhatWare. :)

So, PPC owners, go check it out -- CalliGrapher 8 is out now.