Now with Penfriend XL you can predict the next word you want to write in many languages. It does this using a dictionary of known words, along with detailed knowledge of when they are likely to be used and words you have used before. Every time you type a letter, it comes up with a new list of the most likely words which fit your letters. Choosing one is a simple matter of pressing one more button, or clicking on the word with the mouse. If you're not sure how to read it, you can hear it spoken before you choose a word. This is valuable for those who have physical disabilities or dyslexia. But it will also help those wanting to write in a language that they are learning.
Minimising the predictor window switches off prediction and all the assistive functions in Penfriend XL. Useful if you want to type an email address without spaces after the full stop, or type numbers whilst predicting using numbers.
Screen Reading
Penfriend XL comes with a screen reading and text magnification facility. Just click on the folders on your desktop or read web pages and hear them read with native voices. Speak the list of words offered by your word processor's thesaurus or spell checker.
The spoken text is transferred automatically to the clipboard where, if a large font is used, it can be magnified for those with visual impairment. There is an icon in the clipboard which allows you to switch the screen reading on and off at a single click.
It will also speak back the text you are writing. It can be configured to speak each letter as it is typed, each word as it is completed, and each sentence. It can read words from the prediction list when you point at them, when you choose them, or automatically when they change. It can also read back whole paragraphs (or more) of text from other applications using the clipboard. This might be your document, a web page, an email, or almost anything else.
While speaking text from the clipboard, a window can be shown which follows the voice, highlighting each word as it goes. You can click on a word to hear it again, or to speak a fragment of the text. This can be used in conjunction with the screen reading to enlarge and highlight words being read from web pages or the desktop.
It includes SAPI voices from CereProc, one of the world's leading vendors of quality accented text-to-speech engines. The three English voices Heather, Sarah and Katherine are installed using the standard SAPI protocol for trouble-free listening.
Spell checking, Thesaurus and Dictionary
The screen reader in Penfriend XL makes it possible read and highlight alterative spellings, synonyms and dictionary meanings available in Microsoft Word. These can all be read out, and if necessary magnified, on a right click.Thus although it does not have a spell checker built in, it gives direct access to the excellent Spell Checking, Thesaurus and Dictionary available in MS Word. On-screen Keyboard
Now with keyboards for many languages where their colour and size and font size can be adjusted to suit the user. Anyone can type easily in a foreign language.
On-Screen Keyboard
It will be particularly useful for people either with physical disabilities affecting their use of a keyboard, or for those who do not want to glance repeatedly between the screen and keyboard.
It is also useful to anyone wanting to type in a language that is different from the default language on the users computer. Typing French on a computer set up for use in the UK or German on a computer set up for use in France becomes simple with Penfriend XL's keyboards.
There are now additional characters such as €,[,],@,# available via the Alt key. And the English keyboard now has the accented characters used in Gaelic.
Clicker Integration
As well as predicting words directly into your word processor, Penfriend XL can work with Clicker now including Clicker 5.2, from Crick Software to provide its prediction engine without the user needing to interact with Penfriend directly.
You can now add pictures and symbols to predictions, provide a fully switch accessible environment for using Penfriend and open up many other possibilities such as using prediction in MFL teaching.
Switch Access Integration
Penfriend XL will work with many switch access applications to provide a fully switch accessible predictive writing environment. It integrates fully with Clicker 4 and soon will with Clicker 5 (expected early 2006). It also integrates with Switch Access for Windows (SAW4) from the Ace Centre., It can work alongside Discover Switch and the Windows On-Screen keyboard.
Lexicon Editing
Penfriend doesn't claim to know all the words you want to write in advance, but it is very good at learning them. Every word you type is analysed, and Penfriend can learn those it doesn't recognise.
Depending on your spelling, you might ask for new words to be predicted immediately (as appropriate), or perhaps just to be remembered and then checked by a teacher.
Another feature is the ability to ban words. Thus risque words, or words that a child should be able to spell can be banned, so that they are never predicted.
Penfriend holds new words in a specially marked list, so that you can easily review the ones it has learnt recently. There are various tools for manipulating these, such as approving only those used several times. This is also a useful tool for a teacher to see the spelling errors that a child is making.
As well as learning new words, Penfriend keeps track of the ones you've used, and your style of writing. This all helps to predict the right words next time!
Topic Lexicons
Often you want specific vocabulary for a particular topic. One of the major advantages of Penfriend XL is that it is very easy to teach it new words either from the clipboard or a text file. Thus if you have a document with the words you want to use in it, it takes seconds to teach the program these words. They can then either be kept for the future or used for that one session. It is your choice.
Abbreviation Expansion
As well as predicting words using the letters you type, Penfriend can store phrases or other words, assigned to special codes. For example, 'pfl' might be an abbreviation for 'Penfriend Ltd'. When you type the short code and press Space, Penfriend can automatically replace it. This can speed up writing of commonly used phrases or even sentences. Naturally, you can control the abbreviations yourself, adding and removing them at will.
Smart Punctuation
When you finish a sentence, or use almost any punctuation mark, Penfriend can help you to get it right. Although it normally puts a space after predicted words, it moves that to after the punctuation, and capitalises your next letter. Little things like this give writers the confidence to put their thoughts on paper.
Smart punctuation is a nuisance if you want to type an email address without spaces after a full stop. It can be simply switched off by minimising the predictor window.
Options
Penfriend XL makes its options easy to understand. There are enough to give you the choices you need for the people you work with, but each makes sense, giving you flexibility and comprehension.
The colours of text, in the prediction window and the on-screen keyboard, can be adjusted. The colour of highlighted words, both text and background, can be controlled separately from the normal words. Whether Penfriend learns new words, predicts them immediately, applies 'smart punctuation', or speaks as you type, can all be decided by you. A document included when you buy the system explains which options would help most.
Further, the options are stored per user rather than for the whole computer. This means you can have several people with different needs using the same system, but each one gets it configured especially for them. So one user might be working in English, another in French. All these preferences are stored in the lexicon.
Penfriend XL
