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FitalyStamp Advanced Features
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FitalyStamp offers a number of advanced features which are discussed here. Several of these features go much beyond what is described in the User's Manual. Others are likely to be added in the future in response to users' comments and suggestions.
Contents:
- The Menus
- Key Options
- Sliding Options
- Accent Slides
- Customized Left Slides
- Pass-Through Slides
- Control Keys
The Menus Several options can be used to customize the action of FitalyStamp. They are included in a main menu, accessible from the info button, and in the submenus for Key options and Sliding options: The main menu is shown above on the left. The submenu for
Key Options is in the middle and that for Sliding Options on the right. Key Options Sliding Options Two options let you control whether to use half-cells or full-cells on the punctuation panel and for arrows and accents. (Note that to use half-cells, you may need to adopt a higher position for the FitalyStamp as described in the additional installation notes.) Two options let you control the effect of sliding when full-cells are used: The last option controls the length of sliding: From the Sliding options submenu, you can also access dialogs to select accent slides and to customize left slides as described below. Accent Slides The Select Slides dialog allows you to select which accent slides you want to enable. In the example on the left, only the left slide is enabled, in the one on the right, all slides are enabled : If a given accent slide is checked, accented letters are produced for that direction by short slides and capitals by longer slides. If it is unchecked, capitals are produced for all slides, regardless of their length. The directions for the grave accent (north-west) and the acute accent (north-east) are quite intuitive, as the direction of the slide corresponds to the slant of the accent:
Changes the number layout on the 123 panel.
Toggles between the two forms of the umlaut punctuation panel.
Normally, digits on the punctuation panel are interpreted row-wise, as they appear on FitalyStamp. Alternatively, this option allows you to select a column-wise interpretation.
This option controls whether a sound is produced when you tap on the keyboard toggle.
The keyboard toggle switches the keyboard on or off. This option controls whether the keyboard is automatically switched on again upon launching another application.
Normally, letters of the letter panel are sent at pen down, as this is faster. Alternatively, this option allows you to have letters sent at pen up, which may be needed for some applications doing word-completion.
Use the sure mode if you are experiencing digitizer errors. The sure mode, while slightly slower, is able to compensate for mild digitizer errors which result in occasional incorrect letters.
With full-cell digits, you use sliding to distinguish digits from punctuation. Otherwise, the effect depends on the half-cell on which you tap.
With full-cell accents, you use sliding to distinguish arrows from accents. Otherwise, the effect depends on the half-cell on which you tap.
Controls whether a digit or a punctuation mark is obtained with a direct tap. If digits are direct, punctuation is obtained by sliding.
Controls whether an arrow or an accent is obtained with a direct tap. If arrows are direct, accents are obtained by sliding.
Controls how much the pen must be moved for sliding.
For the other directions, this is more of a convention. In any case, what you get for the grave, umlaut, acute, and circumflex directions are the same letters that you obtain by a tap on the accent block. For example, this means that a slide up from s gives ß.
On the other hand, the letters obtained by a left slide have no corresponding accent panel: You get å for a, and ø for o. In addition:
- A left slide of c produces ç
- A left slide of n produces the ligature æ
- A left slide of e produces the ligature œ
Admittedly, the ligature choices are arbitrary: it would be more natural to assign them positions starting with a and o but they are already occupied. Similarly, we can already do a ç by a north-east slide since ç is in the acute panel. But a left slide is more convenient since a north-east slide from c leads outside of the stamp.
Given that left slides are somewhat arbitrary, it makes a lot of sense to allow them to be redefined as will now be explained.
Customized Left Slides
The dialog to customize left slides offers a major capability for extending and redefining the action of FitalyStamp:
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To find out the current effect of sliding to the left for a given key, tap on that key on the Fitaly diagram of the dialog. The a and A buttons show definitions for lowercase and uppercase letters. Here we see the default left slide definitions: å for a, and Œ for E
Then you can use FitalyStamp itself to enter a different definition for left sliding. Below, we assign @ for a left slide of a and the club suit for c. The 123 popup and the letter popup are conveniently placed under the dialog:
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The new definition can be one or more characters - up to 25 characters:
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The first two examples show what a German user might want to use, reflecting the fact that these letter combinations are frequent in German, by defining "sch" for "s" and "Sch" for "S." Similarly, a Portuguese user, may want to define left slides to enter letters such as ã and õ.
The last example shows that user-defined left slides can also be used in the same way as shortcuts.
Finally, to recover the default left slide definition, you just delete the current definition.
Pass-Through Slides Pass-Through Slides make it possible to call several applications that use such slides as their activation technique. A Pass-Through Slide must start in one of the four rectangles outlined in black and must end either: Unlike normal slides, Pass-Through Slides are not handled by FitalyStamp and are passed through to the underlying Graffiti engine - just as if FitalyStamp were not there. A Pass-Through Slide acts as a slide between the silkscreen buttons shown next to each rectangle.
For example, to activate SwitchHack, a Pass-Through Slide from the South-West rectangle to the North-West rectangle will do. And of course, you can be reassured that all of this works with Bozidar Benc's PopUp Calculator and other popup applications!
Control Keys The Palm OS has a Control state that has been so far only used by hardware keyboards. In this new version of FitalyStamp, you can set the Control state by sliding from the Command key to the Shortcut key:
Thereafter, the next character is understood as being in Control state. For example, MagicText uses Ctrl+m to present a list of plug ins. So you can get it by a (short) slide from the Command key Although explained in terms of MagicText, this capability is very general and can be used by all sorts of applications. If no application is linked to a key, you will hear a bit (assuming the system sound is on) and the normal key will be issued.
to the Shortcut key 
and a tap on m. Similarly, you can use this control slide to get other plug ins that are linked to Ctrl+0 and others.
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