WHAT’S
HOT

   OnSpot not only provides great text recognition,
but also gives you the ability to customize (or train) the characters,
along with the ability to create shortcut text.

SETUP

   Installing OnSpot is nothing out of the ordinary.
This review was completed on my iPaq 2215. Most of the screenshots were
taken in Pocket Word.

PROGRAM
FEATURES

    Let’s take a look at the features and options
of OnSpot. These are accessable via the Input control panel icon (under
Settings).

   
From the Options page, you can access OnSpot’s Settings, watch an animated
demo (we created our own – it’s a little further down in the review),
and read the Help file. Although the instructions here say "Tap
[item] to…", they really mean to tap the icon for the item you
wish to view. For example, to view the help, you would tap on the question
mark (not the word Help).

The
Help button just links to the html Help file.

By
clicking on the Settings button, you are shown several tabs: Personalize,
Shortcuts, Settings, and Info. The Personalize tab gives you 2 choices,
Edit Decuma Alphabet, and Reset Decuma Alphabet.

Editing
the default alphabet is quite simple. You choose the letter (or character)
via the appropriate tab (in this example – the letter A).

Then
you write (using your own handwriting) the character in the green box.

Then
OnSpot will repeat the character. To reenter the character, press Clear
and try again.

To
move to another character, either click on it, or tap the right/left
arrow keys. Characters that are edited are marked with a gray box.

Modifying
a character follows the same steps (in the example above, the "&"
character).

To
save your changes, tap on the Exit key. You are then greeted with an
option box from which you can either keep your changes (Yes), discard
them (No), or continue making edits (Cancel).

If,
for some reason, you wish to reset the personalized alphabet back to
it’s defaults, you can choose Reset from the Personalize tab.

The
next tab is shortcuts. You have the ability to create 10 special "macros"
in this version. In the example, the text "me" will be interpreted
as Mark Anderson.

Under
the settings tab you have several choices.

First,
you can enable multiple character sets. English is set by default.

By
clicking the Advanced button, you can modify the Interpretation speed.

And
last, but not least is the Register button (registration keys come via
a separate email).

The
last tab is Info – which shows the default information (version, copyrights,
etc).

   
Now let’s look at how you enter text with Decuma’s
OnSpot:

   
Here are the two data entry types – Alpha and Numeric (and symbols).
You can enter numbers and some characters into the Alpha tab (green),
but you can’t enter alpha characters on the Numeric tab (blue). Next
to the type tabs are two blue arrows (for moving the cursor), Space
(to insert a space), Backspace, Enter (Carriage Return), and the Settings
buttons.

Above
is a good little "Hello World" example on how text is entered,
interpreted, and then inserted. Note that it interprets the first line
as a lowercase L until I finish the character, and then it changes to
an uppercase H.

If you make a mistake (or if a character is misinterpreted), just rewrite
the character over the top. You can also remove characters by making
a "backspace" gesture through them.

You
can also overwrite multiple characters by simply by making the character
larger.

As
you enter text, it is automatically interpreted and converted. If you
leave a gap (as in the example above) between words, then it will automatically
insert a space.

Inserting
a space is just as easy as modifying characters. Make a "insert
space" gesture, and the space appears.

   
Normally, if you were to continue writing this sentence (by starting
again before the small green ^), then the existing text would appear,
and a space would be added to the end. But what if your word wasn’t
complete (ie jumped in the example above)? By putting in a hyphen at
the end of the word…

…and
then continuing the word before the green ^, the text is inserted, but
without the extra space at the end. You can see another example of this
in the "Hello World" image further up in this review.

Tapping
the large green arrow also inserts the interpreted text without an extra
space at the end.

Numbers
can be entered in much the same way (shown here on the Alpha tab).

As
can characters. Note that in the example above, it interpreted the &
symbol that I modified at the beginning of this review.

HELP
SUPPORT

    While there is a help file within the application,
on Decuma’s
website, there aren’t any Pocket PC support pages. But there is
a contact email and several helpful videos. The low quality videos are
(these will open in a new window): Introduction,
How
to edit, How
to add shortcuts, and Multilingual
support. High quality videos can be found in the Press
section of Decuma’s
site.

SYSTEM
REQUIREMENTS

    Onspot requires 800Kb of free memory and
a Pocket PC.

BUGS
AND WISHES

    I was unable to find any system crashing
bugs. I do have a couple of items on my wish list:

Add
a way to make OnSpot the default SIP (even after a soft reset)

PURCHASING

    OnSpot can be purchased from Handango
or PocketGear
for $29.99.

PROS

• 
  

  Fast
  and accurate text entry

• Ability
  to modify (train) the alphabet
• 
  

  Great
  recognition algorithm

• 
  

  Ability
  to add shortcuts

• Multiple
  language capabilities
• Ability
  to make edits on the fly

CONS

• 
  

  Only
  10 shortcut slots available

• 
  

  No
  predictive text capabilities

• 
  

  Can’t
  write anywhere on the screen

• Price

OVERALL
IMPRESSION

   Decuma’s
OnSpot is probably the most efficient SIP I’ve ever had the opportunity
to use. The text recognition is fast and not to mention accurate. Plus
it has the ability to make edits on the fly, and the choice to train
Onspot to be even more accurate based upon the user’s own handwriting.
The price is a little steep right now ($29.99), but when I first downloaded
this software, Decuma had a $10 off coupon on their site – and perhaps
they will again soon. I would highly recommend this application to anyone
with a Pocket PC, I know that it’s currently my text entry of choice.

Have
you used OnSpot? See something that isn’t quite right? Tell us what
you think! Click on the Discussion Link below.