TealScript is a program that replaces the Palm organizer's built-in handwriting recognition. It's highly customizable, allowing you to add arbitrary patterns for each character and train it to recognize your particular handwriting's peculiarities. After using TealScript for a couple of weeks, I can definitely say that my handwriting recognition has improved. Characters that used to give me trouble (notably j, v, and 8) I can now write with no trouble at all, after spending a little time training it to recognize the way I like to write them. TealScript also comes with alternate patterns for a number of characters, allowing you to write letters such as a, e, and g as you normally would while printing on paper. This feature alone will probably endear TealScript to the hearts of many Palm organizer users.

In the remainder of this article, I will explore some of the features of TealScript and provide an introduction on how to get started using it. Some additional comments on my experiences using the software can be found at the end of the article.

Getting started
You can download TealScript from the TealPoint home page at http://www.tealpoint.com, or from PilotGear at http://www.pilotgear.com. It is shareware, and you are allowed to try it out for free before registering. You can register on the TealPoint home page, or with PilotGear, though if you want to use a credit card you will need to use PilotGear.

After downloading TealScript and installing the default profile (contained in the file Profile.pdb, which is included in the zip file with the main program), you will see the main menu shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

This is TealScript's main menu screen.

The main menu is where you configure certain options for TealScript. The most important two are probably the Enable Globally check box, and the On Up Stroke option. If Enable Globally is checked, TealScript will replace the Palm organizer's default handwriting recognition for all applications (otherwise, it will be active only when you are within TealScript itself). The On Up Stroke option allows you to specify what happens when you do a full pen stroke from the bottom to the top of the screen. This replaces the up stroke function which is normally configured in the Prefs application under Buttons->Pen.