FitalyVirtual User's Manual

Contents:

• Working with Fitaly
• Numbers and Shifting
• International Variations
• Command and Shortcut Keys
• Type Even Faster with Sliding
• The Information Menu
• FitalyVirtual as a Launcher
• Getting up to speed
• Questions and answers
• Additional information

Working with Fitaly

The Fitaly keyboard for the Palm Organizer is an ergonomic replacement for the standard on-screen Qwerty keyboard.

The patented Fitaly key arrangement is optimized for pen entry: the letters ital ne dors and the space – together representing 73% of the keys used for normal text – are placed in a very tight central area. Adding the letters ch and um brings this frequency to 84%.

Remaining keys are never more than two keys away from this central area and each key is placed near the keys most likely to follow it in text. 

The effect is to minimize pen travel. In addition, the layout practically eliminates hand movement when typing text. This means that you can type with your hand rested on the lower part of the organizer, moving only the fingers holding the pen. 

FitalyVirtual is a version of  the Fitaly keyboard that works as an overlay on the Graffiti area. On the Clié NR70, it works as a "skin" covering the virtual Graffiti area and modeled after the design of FitalyStamp. As a Fitaly keyboard, it retains the unique speed advantages of the Fitaly design as well as speed features such as the use of sliding to enter capital letters and numbers. And of course, a very significant advantage is to leave the screen completely free for other applications...

FitalyVirtual also acts as a launcher: Just under the keyboard is an Application Bar which allowing one-tap activation of user-defined applications.

The FitalyVirtual skin replaces the complete Graffiti area, providing its basic functions in another way.

The main function of input is provided by the Fitaly keyboard itself with four panels called the left, letter, punctuation, and right panels. Remaining functions are provided with five icons included in a green side bar on the left.

The Side Bar The side bar includes the icons for the Application launcher, the Calculator, the Menu, and the Find command.  It also includes a keyboard toggle to turn FitalyVirtual on or off.

The Left Panel The left panel includes the tab, caps lock, and shift keys, and the 123 toggle to alternate between the letter panel and a panel with numbers.  The information key  opens a menu with several options for FitalyVirtual.

The Letter Panel The letter panel includes two large space bars and the 26 letters of the alphabet in the patented Fitaly layout - named after the second row.

The Punctuation Panel The punctuation panel includes punctuation keys.  Alternate keys are obtained by shifting or in combination with accent keys. Lower triangles indicate digits that can be entered either directly or by sliding, that is, by moving the pen sufficiently far before releasing it.

The Right Panel The right panel includes the backspace and  enter keys. The shortcut key  is used to enter Graffiti shortcuts. The command key  is used for menu commands. Slides from command to shortcut set the Palm in Control state.

Accent Keys and Arrow Keys

The lower four keys include accent keys – obtained directly – and arrow keys – obtained by sliding. The four accent keys are sticky keys. A tap on an accent key modifies certain keys of the letter and punctuation panels. This is a one-time effect that only applies to the next letter. 

The left and right single arrows are used to cursor one character left or one character right. The effect of the double arrows depends on the cursor position:

• For a field, the left double arrow moves to the field before, the right double arrow to the field after.

• For text, the left double arrow moves to the line before, the right double arrow to the line after.

Toggling FitalyVirtual On/Off

Tapping on the FitalyVirtual Toggle toggles off the function of the keyboard and restores the default Graffiti skin as shown on the left.

To restore the FitalyVirtual skin and its function, tap on the smaller version of this toggle below the menu icon.

Numbers and Shifting

The letter panel and the punctuation panels can be modified in various ways to produce all the 220 characters of the Latin1 character set with these modifications – something that no other keyboard allows. Let us start by the 123 key.

Numbers

A tap on the 123 key pops up a panel with numbers and the keys most often used in conjunction with numbers: currency symbols, such as $ ¢ £ ¥ €, the degree ° and mathematical symbols. The right side duplicates the punctuation panel.

The number panel remains on the screen until you tap on the
123 key again or outside the number panel on the screen. 

Shifted Numbers

Shifting numbers displays other more rarely used symbols such as ½, ‰, superscripts ¹ ² ³, the non-breaking space (n.b.) and the ellipsis…

You may not use these symbols every day, but if you need them, they are on the Fitaly. Actually, the Fitaly is the only way to enter some of these characters on a Palm Organizer. While the number panel is on, you can tap keys either on the number panel or on FitalyVirtual.

The effect of shifting on letters is, as expected, to get upper case letters. The effect on keys of the punctuation panel is as shown in the above popup screen.

International Variations

A tap on any of the four accent keys pops up a panel with accented letters and other characters of the Latin1 character set. For example, tapping the circumflex accent ˆ followed by e produces ê.  This means that each accented key can be produced with only two taps. In addition, this alsos displays alternate keys for the punctuation panel.

Accent keys are one-time modifiers so that the popup panel disappears immediately after a tap on the key. The display is optional. For example, you may want to show punctuation panels but not letter panels and tap accented letters on FitalyVirtual itself since the position of accented letters is easy to infer.

We now review the four accent variations, along with their effect on the punctuation panel.

Acute Accent

The acute accent changes the vowels to vowels with an acute accent. It also changes the letter c  into ç and C  into Ç  (in shifted form). 

The punctuation panel shows all currency and legal symbols. With shifting and the acute accent, the letter panel appears as shown on the right.

Grave Accent

The grave accent changes the vowels a e i o u to accented form. It also changes the letters d and t into the Icelandic ð and þ. Similarly, D T are changed into Ð Þ.

The punctuation panel includes the Danish å æ and ø, the French œ ligature,
and the n-dash – and m-dash —

Circumflex Accent

The circumflex accent changes the vowels as expected. But see also how it changes the letter s and S into š and Š. 

The punctuation panel offers two-tap access to any of the brackets.

Umlaut Key

The umlaut key changes all vowels to vowels with umlauts. In addition, the letters m n s become µ ñ ß and N becomes Ñ.

The punctuation panel offers two-tap access to useful symbols such as @ and &, as well as the bullet •.  In addition, it can be configured to include the card suits as shown on the right.

Command and Shortcut Keys

The Command Key 

The command key is used for menu commands: a tap on the command key followed by a letter activates the proper menu command.  For example, you can use either U or u for undo.

The Shortcut Key  

The shortcut key is used for Graffiti shortcuts.  To type any of the shortcuts, tap this key either before or after those of the shortcut. For example, tap either ds or ds for the date stamp.

Type Even Faster with Sliding

The main purpose of Fitaly is fast typing on a palm device and most characters can be entered with one or two taps. However, when upper case letters are frequent, as in addresses, repeated shifting can be cumbersome. Similarly, when letters and digits are intermixed, toggling 123 repeatedly can become inconvenient.

This is why FitalyVirtual offers sliding: Sliding happens when you tap on a key and then move the pen sufficiently far before releasing it. When you tap a letter, you see it appear at key down. If you slide, a backspace is emitted followed by the revised letter at key up.

Sliding for Capitals

Sliding any letter capitalizes it. Most likely, you will slide down from the top rows or up from the bottom rows.  If All Caps is on, sliding gives a lower case letter.

Sliding for Occasional Digits

Sliding any of the punctuation keys produces the digit shown in the lower triangle. The slide direction does not matter.

Sliding Space to Backspace

Sliding any of the space keys backspaces.

Sliding to Delete

When entering text, you tend to use backspaces for corrections. But for editing, you would often prefer to have a delete key. You get the effect of delete by sliding the backspace key.

Other forms of sliding – accent slides and custom left slides – are explained in the section on Advanced Features. This section also explains passthrough slides: wide slides between the underlying silkscreen buttons that are passed through to other applications.

The Information Menu

A tap on the information key  opens the information menu:

Adjust brightness opens the brightness dialog. Key options and Sliding options open submenus with additional options. The last two menu items, Show letters/Don’t show letters and Show punctuation/Don’t show punctuation, control which popup panels are displayed when you tap on an accent key.

Key options

Set calculator pad/phone pad controls the number layout on the popup number panel: calculator phone Set symbols/Set card suits lets you select forms of the umlaut punctuation panel.

Set normal digits/Set 12345-67890 lets you select the digit layout normally shown on the Stamp or a column-wise arrangement.

Set toggle sound on/off controls whether a tap on the keyboard toggle produces a sound. The sound level itself depends on that set for the game sound in the general Palm preferences.

Set automatic/permanent toggle controls whether FitalyVirtual is automatically restarted upon switching to another application.

Set letters at pen up/normal letters: The normal and faster way is to send letters at pen down. Sending them at pen up may be needed for certain applications that do word completion.

Set sure mode may help to compensate for mild digitizer problems. With a normal digitizer, use Set normal mode.

Sliding options

Set half-cell digits/full-cell digits: With half-cells, taps on keys of the punctuation panel depend on whether taps are on an upper or lower triangle. With full-cell digits, sliding is used to distinguish punctuation from digits. Set half-cell accents/full-cell accents: With half-cells, taps on keys of the accent block depend on whether taps are in the upper or lower half. With full-cell accents, sliding is used to distinguish accents from arrows.

When using full-cells for digits, Set digit direct/punctuation direct controls which of the two is obtained by a direct tap. The other choice is then obtained by sliding.

When using full-cells for accents, Set accents direct/arrows direct controls which of the two is obtained by a direct tap. The other choice is then obtained by sliding.

Set shorter sliding/normal sliding controls how much the pen must be moved after a tap to be counted as a slide.

Select slides

You can select which accent slides you want to enable. If a given accent slide is checked, accented letters are produced for that direction by short slides and capitals are produced by longer slides. If it is unchecked, capitals are produced by all slides, regardless of their length.

Custom left slides

You can specify what characters are produced by sliding to the left on letters: First, tap on the letter you want to define on the dialog. Then use Fitaly to type the desired character, or the desired sequence of characters.

When you tap on a letter of the diagram, the current definition for its left slide is displayed and you can change it. To restore the default definition, just delete the current definition.

You can use the  buttons to act on lower or upper case letters.

FitalyVirtual as a Launcher

In addition to the Fitaly keyboard functionality, FitalyVirtual also acts as a launcher: Just under the Fitaly keyboard is the Application Bar:

The buttons numbered 1 through 9 are user-defined and can serve for one-tap activation of applications and special actions.

Here we are showing buttons 1-6 associated with Datebk5, Address book, MemoPad, Filez, WordSmith, and Bridge. Button 7 is the backlight toggle and 8 and 9 are Page Up and Page Down. The button at the right of 9 shows the position of the builtin Qwerty keyboard. The rightmost button calls FVSetup, a companion application for FitalyVirtual, used to setup user-defined buttons.

Of course this is only an example but it remedies a major drawback of the NR70 when used in tablet mode, namely the lack of an easy access to standard application — since hardware buttons are only accessible in clamshell mode.

A tap on the pyramid button on the left of the Application Bar opens a list showing the 12 most-recently used applications. This display 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. Note that these 12 applications are distinct from the 9 of the Application Bar. This means that you can get quick access to 21 applications. The ones on the Application Bar are accessed with a single tap; the ones of the most-recently used list with two taps, counting the tap on the pyramid button.

Finally, sliding the pyramid button downwards reactivates the last application. This provides an easy way to alternate between two applications.

Setting the Application Bar Assigning applications to buttons is done with the FVSetup application. Tap on any of the buttons numbered 1 to 9 and then select the desired action. The assignement is immmediately reflected by showing the selected application 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 Ronomatic pen stroke, and the Backlight toggle.

Getting up to speed

Visualize: Fitaly is a visual keyboard. You can become very fast if you visualize a word on the Fitaly keyboard before you tap its letters. Take a simple sentence and visualize the word patterns without typing them, words you use all the time such as “what”... “the”... “to do to”... “one”... “more.” Practice. Practicing the same sentence again and again will increase your overall typing speed on new text.

FitalyLetris. FitalyVirtual comes with the word game FitalyLetris on the disk. It is a great training aid to build speed with frequent words.

Light touch. Very light tapping and “dancing” over keys will improve speed. Light taps are also much less tiring as well as more gentle on the screen.

Common questions and answers

Question:	FitalyVirtual looks like a demo. What can be done?
Answer:	Registration information is managed by FVSetup. You need to enter your registration in FVSetup. If you delete FVSetup, FitalyVirtual will revert to a demo. You can install it again from the copy that is maintained on your desktop computer in the FitalyVirtual folder.
Question:	What to do if taps on FitalyVirtual only produce dots?
Answer:	This may result from a conflict with some other application that intercepts taps on the Graffiti area. A list of known incompatible applications is in the Readme notes.
Question:	What to do if taps produce random letters?
Answer:	The first thing to check is the current alignment of the digitizer. It is recommended that you redo the digitizer procedure using something very sharp, like a wooden toothpick. (The tip of the pen is too large and not precise enough.) If problems subsist, they are likely to be due to a digitizer malfunction. Setting the Sure mode option may compensate for mild problems . For more severe problems, repairing the digitizer is the only solution. See the online FAQ on this subject.
Question:	Where to go for new ideas, new versions, the FAQ, and support questions?
Answer:	The Fitaly forum is a place where new ideas on making Fitaly an even faster method are being actively discussed. Several improvements incorporated in recent versions originated in forum discussions Visit the forum also to learn about new versions as they are developed and made available to users. A separate forum is available where you can find tips and answers to Frequently asked questions. Finally, for support questions, requiring fast answers, the best is to email the Fitaly support line:  FitalyInfo@fitaly.com

Additional Information

Additional information is provided in the following documents:

• Advanced Features
• Panel Reference
• Character Reference
• FitalyVirtual Index
• Contact information
• Fitaly License Agreement

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ReadMe First User's Manual Advanced Features Panel Reference Character Reference

FitalyVirtual Index FitalyVirtual License FitalyLetris Textware Solutions Palm Fitaly Forum

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