Much less powerful but free examples for general use include TypingAid, Volkmar Kobelt’s VK TypeHelp and the open-source Presage, which was formerly known as Soothsayer. These include Penfriend XP and XL, WordQ, ClaroRead and Crick Software’s Clicker. There are lots of commercial programs aimed at schools. It’s usually easier to know if a word sounds right than if it looks right. Programs such as Quillsoft’s WordQ 5 help by voicing words. Predictive text programs are also useful in schools, because children can select words that they know but aren’t sure how to spell. Penfriend says its predictive software “benefits users who have dyslexia, visual impairment or physical disabilities, including cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, stroke, limb deformities and any condition which impairs the ability to write with a keyboard”. However, predictive software was tremendously useful to people who needed assistance for other reasons. If you were a fast typist – even the two-fingered type – then programs such as MindReader were more annoying than helpful. Many predictive text programs use the PC’s function keys to make the selection, though I can’t remember if MindReader did this as well. If you didn’t want any of them, you just carried on typing. You could then insert a whole word by selecting the one you wanted. MindReader read what you were typing, guessed what the word might be, and popped up a numbered list of choices. I don’t know if Brown Bag came up with the idea, but its approach is typical. The first one I used was Brown Bag Software’s MindReader, which arrived on a 5.25in floppy disk in the early 1980s. Predictive text programs have been around for a long time, and many are still available.
I looked at Grammarly, and a couple of others, but they’re not really what I’m after. My PC doesn’t have a touch screen, but I feel I would still benefit from the predictive text, as I’m not a touch typer. Is there an intelligent keyboard app for Windows 10? I use Swype on my tablet, and apart from being faster than keyboard typing, I love the power of its intelligent predictive text.
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