FIGURE D

You can add additional match patterns to your TealScript profile using this dialog box.

There are three groups you can place the pattern in: standard, which is usually used for the normal graffiti patterns; alternate, which contains alternative and optional patterns for the various characters; and distort, which can be used to store degenerate patterns that you find you draw frequently.

The reason to place the pattern in a particular group is that the alternate and distort groups can be configured separately or disabled, allowing you to easily modify which types of patterns your Palm organizer will recognize without having to disable each character's alternate patterns individually.

When adding a pattern, make sure to specify whether it is drawn in the Alpha (letters) or Number writing areas, and whether it should be used in normal, punctuation, or extended shift modes. It doesn't do much good to add alternative forms of the number 8 if TealScript doesn't try to recognize it on the numbers side of the writing area!

Editing your profile
The final dialog box we will examine is the Edit Profile box, accessible by clicking the Edit Profile button from the main menu, as shown in Figure E.

FIGURE E

TealScript also allows you to bypass training and testing and edit your profile directly.

TealScript is very configurable, allowing you to exercise fine-grained control over the recognition for each character. Occasionally, you may find that even after training and testing, TealScript still doesn't recognize certain characters the way you would like.

Using the Edit Profile menu, you can directly edit each character, add new patterns, and change the way each pattern is recognized. For example, after selecting a pattern on the left side of the screen, you can specify a cutoff and a squelch value, which make it less likely that TealScript will match what you draw to that pattern. The cutoff value is the minimum match percentage required before TealScript will select that pattern as a match. The squelch value further reduces the likelihood that the pattern will be selected as a match over other patterns.

These settings allow you to reduce the likelihood that simple patterns, which may be easy to match, are used more often than they should be. You can also directly add patterns for a character by clicking Add New, similar to using the Add Last feature in the Test Profile dialog.

If all this sounds complicated, don't worry. The software comes with very sensible default values for most characters, including the "normal" printing patterns for 'a', 'g', 'v', and others. A detailed manual in Doc format is also included. It explains how to use the various dialogs and provides some tips for editing your profile to provide the best recognition possible.

Final comments
On the whole, I have to say that I have been very happy with the performance of TealScript. Using it, I was able to greatly improve the recognition of my "problem" characters, 'j', 'v', and '8', as well as begin to write more naturally on my Palm organizer.