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Whenever a new device is brought to light, the logical and perfectly understandable tendency is to create a system to make the use of the device at least bearable, if not a whole lot easier. That’s what also happened when we all started texting on numerical pads and the revolutionary T9 texting, a system of predictive text, facilitated the new task.



Cliff Kushler, one of the guys who developed the T9 technology, set his mind on lightening and taking writing on a touchscreen keyboard to the next level. He, therefore, developed Swype, an amazing new system which is said to be a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. This technology allows you to input words more quickly than other data input methods (you can write at up to 50 words per minute) with one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard. You can use the application on a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more. The only thing you should do is to simply trace a path through the word. If you do that, the system will recognize the word you want to write down, even if you are not very accurate.



Swype has three major components: an input path analyzer, a search engine which matches words with accompanying word database and an user interface which is customizable by OEM’s. The system runs in real-time and can be used on relatively low-powered portable devices. Concerning the software, it is very tightly written and has a total memory footprint of under 1MB: the application requires from 50K to 90K (it depends on options, when complied for the Windows Mobile platform) meanwhile the 65.000-word language database has an average size of approximately 250K.



The Swype system is very easy to learn, as the keyboard layout is QWERTY. Therefore, there is virtually no learning curve if you’re already familiar with a regular keyboard. On the other hand, Swype seems to do all the work by itself: it automatically enters spaces for you and it corrects misspelled words. So, if you, for example, trace out “hlep”, Swype will automatically generate “help”. The Swype dictionary has 65.000 words and it covers to a great extent the vocabulary, but if the word you are typing isn’t already in the dictionary, once you tap it out followed by a space, Swype will remember it the next time you’ll need it. You don’t even need to worry about accented characters (words which have in their structure “diacritics”), as Swype will display the correct spelling immediately after you trace the word.



Maybe it’s a little difficult to understand how this new system works, but when the technology will apply to Windows Mobile (smartphones), to the tablet version of XP and Vista, or, why not, to the iPhone, I’m sure that Swype will undoubtedly replace the famous T9.

(Source Dvice)