FitalyStamp 3 — Preview

FitalyStamp Version 3 is based on three main ideas:

• Making custom slides more general and even more powerful.
• Adding a launcher capability to Fitaly with an Application Bar and a list of Most Recently Used applications.
• A simplification of all option dialogs.

In addition, FitalyStamp 3 offers full support for Palm OS 5.

Fully General Custom Slides

Fitaly 2 introduced the idea of slides by direction and of custom left slides. As custom left slides became very popular, Version 3 generalizes this customization to the 8 possible directions. In addition, Version 3 makes them more powerful and easier to define. To define slides, you can proceed by direction and select either one of the directions buttons. Alternatively, you can proceed by letter and define slides for all directions for a given letter.

Slides by Direction

With a tap on the W button, you get the custom slides for the West direction – formerly called left slides in Version 2. The dialog acts as a viewer and lets you see all slides defined for that direction. For example, a slide of the letter "a" in the West direction produces an å, the default for that letter.

If you want to edit a given slide, a tap on its line opens the editor on the right. As the example shows, the text associated with a slide can include hard line breaks and they are shown as ¶ in the overall view.

Slides by Letter

Tapping on the Define Letter button opens an alternate view showing the slides of all directions for a given letter.

To edit a given slide, tap on its line and this opens an editor just as in we saw for slides by direction. To switch to another letter, tap the letter on the Fitaly keyboard. The a A toggles from lower case to upper case as shown on the right.

Slides for Special Keys

Tapping on the Define Special button allows the definition of slides for fourteen special keys:

• The five keys of the green Side Bar: Home, Calc, Menu, Find, and Toggle.
• The five keys of the Left Panel: Tab, Caps, Shift, 123, and Info.
• The two space keys: LSpace and Rspace.
• The two top keys of the Right Panel: Back and Enter.

For each of this special keys, the dialog shows the current function obtained by a slide for each of the directions. For example, in the absence of any redefinition, the dialog will show for each direction for the Home key. A tap on a line opens an editor that allows new definitions. In the example on the left, the South slide has been redefined to show the Application Bar.

FitalyStamp as a Launcher

FitalyStamp Version 3 adds the two Launcher features that were first introduced in FitalyVirtual, the Fitaly version for machines with a virtual Graffiti area:

• The List of Most Recently Used applications
• The Application Bar.

These features have proven to be very popular on the Clié NR70 and NX70, two machines on which the hardware buttons are not easily accessible. They will be equally useful with FitalyStamp as the keyboard is the starting point of all actions.

The list of Most Recently Used (MRU) applications is similar to that of launchers such as SwitchHack and McPhling and you can select any of these application by a tap on its line. The list includes up to 12 applications. Displaying the MRU list is obtained by default with a South slide of the Tab key. As we saw earlier, you can also assign it to some other slide of one of the fourteen assignable special keys.

The second launcher feature is an Application Bar showing icons for user-selected favorite applications. The Application Bar pops up at the bottom of the screen when doing a South slide of the Home key. The Application Bar has 12 icons and its applications are not duplicated in the MRU list. This means that you can get quick access to 24 different applications by combining the Application Bar and the MRU list.

Setting the Application Bar

Assigning applications to buttons is done with the dialog displayed on the Application Bar page of the FitalySetup application. Tap on any of the buttons entries of the top list and then select the desired action. The assignement will be reflected by showing the selected icon on the Application Bar.

Note that the assignable actions include all applications currently on the Palm device. They also include actions that correspond to the hardware Up and Down button, the pen swipe, and the backlight toggle.

The New Fitaly Options

All FitalyStamp options are now handled by a separate application called FitalySetup. The options are handled by different panels that can be selected with a drop-down list.

The new menu can open FitalySetup directly at panels such as Application Bar and Custom Slides. Options that are not on the menu (such as Popup) are selected from the drop-down list.

The new panels should be more intuitive than the menus used in Version 2 and should make it easier to know what are the current options settings.

You can actually test some of the options directly from within FitalySetup. For example, you can change the Toggle sound from on to off and tap on the keyboard toggle to see the effect. Likewise, you can select the Umlaut Panel to show card suits and then tap on umlaut on the accent block to see the effect, as shown on the left.

A similar approach is used for Popup options and Sliding options. They should be quite self-explanatory and more details are available in the help.

Sliding options allow you to specify the number of pixels needed for a short slide and a long slide. Moves that are shorter than the minimum are not interpreted as slides. They are taken as normal taps.

Finally, the Test Options panel includes some testing tools.

The first group provides two ways to test digitizer function. The first check box works in conjunction with MemoPad and puts in a memo the coordinates for each tap as well as the letter produced. Of course, you cannot do much else when this is active and a tap on the info key goes back directly to the Test Options panel to let you uncheck the option. The second checkbox lets you see the coordinates of each tap directly in the Test Options panel

The second group shows the X and Y adjustments done by FitalyStamp when you do an Adjust Position. This is only informational. In some rare cases where you may have misadjusted positions beyond any possible correction, the Clear button can reset the adjustments to zero values, after which you can do another Adjust Position.

Palm OS 5 — Downloading and Installing

Click on FitalyStamp3b1.zip to download a zip archive containing the FitalyStamp 3 installation files:

• FitalySetup3.prc
• FitalyStamp3Hack.prc
• FitalyStampOS5.prc

Version 3 supports Palm OS 5 as well as earlier versions of the Palm OS operating system. The file FitalySetup3.prc is the same for all versions of the operating system and should be installed regardless of which OS version you have.

OS5 Installation — For installation on a Tungsten T, FitalyStampOS5.prc should be installed. If you have used an earlier version of FitalyStamp for OS5, you need to disable it and uninstall it before installing this new version. Finally, enable FitalyStamp from its icon on the application launcher screen.

OS 3 or 4 Installations — For installation on these earlier versions of the Palm OS operating system, FitalyStamp3Hack.prc should be installed. In addition, Version 3 requires the presence of an extension manager such as XMaster. Finally, enable FitalyStamp from the extension manager.

(Note that you can have both version 2 and 3 on the same machine, for example for testing, as long as they are not enabled at the same time.)

Demo - License - Plans

The demo version is free and fully functional. The demo will cease to operate after ten days, after which you can get another ten-day evaluation period by uninstalling and reinstalling the demo. After registration, the software becomes a registered version usable without any time limitation.

Registration of FitalyStamp3 is done from the About - Register panel of FitalySetup. (FSStatus.prc is no longer used.) The User code can be based either on the User name or on the Device serial number. Upgrading to Version 3 is free until March 1, 2003 for users who purchased FitalyStamp after October 1, 2002. For other FitalyStamp users, upgrading costs $10 and can be ordered from the FitalyStamp order page.

We hope you enjoy this new version of FitalyStamp. The new Version 3 features will soon be added to a future version 3 of FitalyVirtual.

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Download the FitalyStamp 3 Zip Archive
Textware Solutions

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