A review & quick tutorial of TextPlus for Windows Mobile 1.1 by SmartCell Technology
As I've done quite much work with custom word completion dictionaries (WCD for short), I've been writing quite much on this subject (see for example this and this blog entry/link collection to my other, related articles) and know the limitations of the current, default WCD model. This is why I was really delighted to see TextPlus for Windows Mobile 1.1 by SmartCell Technology – it, as it's independent of the built-in, really restricted Windows Mobile word completion dictionary model, really offers a lot.
This app is really good. I've played quite extensively with it and, so far, like it very much. It's so much better than the 9000 byte-restricted dyncompdict.dat-based built-in custom (user-creatable/-input-based) word completion dictionary.
Its documentation, dictionary creation-wise, is far from perfect, though – without a great deal of testing and discovery, it's not obvious how custom dictionaries should be created. The following is a quick course on how this should be done.
First, in order for the wordlist -> DB conversion to work (I assume you do want to make your own lists – the built-in / downloadable (the latter is the same, except that it contains Palm PDB's instead - than the one shipped with the Pocket PC installer so it's not worth downloading) ones are limited to 13 European-only languages and a medical/military/Bible dictionary), you must provide it with a "reference" database. The documentation doesn't say anything about creating/getting this (this may not be clear for a WinCE user because there're no PDB files in anywhere on his/her desktop/Pocket PC); so, I do it instead.
First, create your CRLF-separated text file with the words.
Now, on the desktop, start Start /Programs/SmartCell Technology/TextPlus/TextPlus Database Builder. Go to "Change database file format" because, first, we need to create a "reference" DB in Palm format. (Please note that this step is not necessary if you download the above-mentioned downloadable Palm PDB databases and extract any of the PDB files from it!)
In the "Input database file" input field, enter the path of for any .wde file in c:\Program Files\SmartCell Technology\TextPlus\TextPlus Database Collection\; for example, c:\Program Files\SmartCell Technology\TextPlus\TextPlus Database Collection\TextPlus French Database\TextPlusDBFre.wde. (You can use the Browse button to browse the file system to avoid directly entering full file paths.)
In the "Output database file" input field, enter for example c:\Reference.pdb (I'll put it in the root of C: so that it can be easily found).
Finally, switch the radio buttons at the bottom to "Windows format to Palm OS format".
Click OK and voila: Reference.pdb is created in the root of the C: hard disk.
Now, go to "Convert word and pharse list to database file" and fill in the word/pharse list filenames/paths. Both of them should be given, even with bogus contents (for example, just one word/pharse), if the other file does contain something. For example, in this tutorial, I only convert the full Finnish dictionary available here whithout any pharses. Therefore, my DummyParseList.txt is an empty one, not containing anything (therefore, it's 0 bytes in size).
In the third, "reference" PDB field, enter c:\Reference.pdb – the "reference" Palm database you've just created. Finally, in the PDB file name and the database name, you can enter anything – I've chosen 'Finnish' so that the filename/DB name also reflects its contents.
You'll be greeted with a "success" dialog:
Now, you'll need to convert this file into the Windows format. Again, choose "Change database file format" and fill in the just-created PDB path&name to the uppermost and the to-be-created path and name to the second field (this time, do not switch the radio buttons to "Windows format to Palm OS format"):
Congrats – you're set. You only need to copy the newly-created c:\Finnish.wde into \Program Files\SmartCell\TextPlus\ on your PDA; for example, with Total Commander & the WinCE FS plug-in (see this tutorial on using and setting it up):
Now, all you need to do to switch to the new dictionary is going to Settings/Input on your PDA, choose TextPlus in the Input method drop-down list (if you haven't already activated this Software Input Panel) and click OK. Now, just change the "Current Database" drop-down list to Finnish.wde:
Great - now, everything is OK, as you can see for example in here:
Finally, another small problem - the maximum size of an input database can't exceed 999k. This won't cause problems in most cases. However, if you would like to make HUGE databases available on your Pocket PC, that won't work without your optimizing it first.
Unfortunately, the app doesn't do any decent optimization based on the similarity of the end of words (an article by me, hopefully, soon to be published will shed a light on this). The only optimization it offers is only including words between a minimal and a maximal size, and it's only in "scan" mode. In this respect, it's certainly inferior to tools that do advanced optimizations – for example, mine (a native .NET CF version (one that you don't need Java for and can run on both the Windows desktop and your Pocket PC) is also available, along with the sources, albeit, without a decent homepage/documentation as yet. I will create a decent homepage and generalize the code so that it can also be used to really optimize the input word list for TP in a few days.
(Incidentally, the documentation states "One unique feature of TextPlus is its frequency-based intelligent search engine, which chooses only frequently used words and phrases for suggestion. The frequency of each word and phrase is updated automatically as you use TextPlus so that the speed and accuracy of your text entry would increase over time." I'd certainly debate with this: dyncompdict.dat is also updated by the WC framework in Windows Mobile based on the frequency a word is used.)
Other, recommended links:
PPCT's review
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Nope, I'm sure. At least not me. What page did you go to?