Thread: Phone style text input applet (with Source code!)

I will definitely be looking at this code within the next few days for integration into AIMEE I have a PS2 numberpad sitting in my shed doing nothing that fits into my armrest perfectly, this will be an awesome addition to AIMEE and my car to get it done


Garry

with the whole t9 thing in mind, how are you storing or planning on storing the dictionary file?

I was thinking that if you could store it in a tree then searching through the database would be quite quick as you can ignore a lot of words very easily by pruning every branch on the tree but the first letter typed and so on for each following letter.

I think thats how t9 works anyhow, just a thought

Thats an interesting thought Keegan. I was just going to store the words into 37 tables (1 letter per table, 0-9, and punctuation), and query the table. Then the resultset from that gets passed into the function recursively, so each function just takes unmatched words out until you reach the end of inputted characters, or until there are no more words (at which point i plan on calling the first input applet to let you spell the words!)

Actually, that kind of sounds like what you are talking about, doesnt it...

Slight modification: This version uses the keys as they are layed out (e.g. 1 = Punctuation, 2 = abc2, 3 = def3 etc

I'm still working on a version which is completely customisable (allow you to enter international characters into it, or change what the +, -, . keys do as well. But its got a bit busier here at work, so it might take a bit (really should get me a version of Visual Studio at home!)

Dominik,

I will be making it fully customisable using an ini file, so once I've done that I shall send it back to you (so you can do some work on T9 stuff if you want )


Garry

Yeah, and i think that would be easier to do in basic than trees are. Though i havent used vb for quite some time

Predictive text works!

just sorting out some details before i release the program (its currently using an MSSQL Database, but this might be hard to distribute). The way it works is quite simple really; its the Database which does most of the work - Each word is actually broken up into the letters it comprises of.

For example: the words hello & World are stored as

Word| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
----------------------------------------
hello | 4 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 6 |NULL|NULL|NULL|
World| 9 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 3 |NULL|NULL|NULL|

So when i press 4, i do an SQL Query for all words that have 4 as the first keypress. Then when i press 3, i search for all words that have 4 as the first letter and 3 as the second letter. Speed is not an issue on the MSSQL database, but i need to try an Access DB

(Part of my program also loads words from a Text file, inserting records into the DB with the letters mapped out)

Will post program in the next few days...

You could make this thing not require cutting and pasting and have it enter directly into any textbox or convert any number presses or combination of number presses into letters for every running program by creating a global windows hook. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...dowshookex.asp You could use the numlock or scrolllock status to determine when numbers should be converted to letters and when they should simply pass through as numbers. With the hook, you would just change the data as it is recieved from the keyboard before it ever gets to the application. I wrote an application before that converted any keyboard key you pressed into a single phrase, I'll post it later if I can find it. It's in C though. I know you can do a application wide hook in VB, not sure about a global one though.

Originally Posted by Dominik

just sorting out some details before i release the program (its currently using an MSSQL Database, but this might be hard to distribute)

Why are you even using a database? You have a relatively small dataset, the whole english language takes up the same space as a good size bitmap would. You could simply load the whole dictionary into memory from a text file or something, it shoudl only consume a few megs at most and be far faster then the overhead of a database. When loading it in, you simply convert the alphabetic form into the numeric form and store it along with it.