Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on mobile phones and in
accessibilityAccessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access" and benefit from some system or entity...
technologies. Each key press results in a
prediction rather than repeatedly sequencing through the same group of "letters" it represents, in the same, invariable order.
Predictive text could allow for an entire
word to be input by single keypress.
Predictive text makes efficient use of fewer device keys to input
writingWriting is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
into a
text messageSMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
, an
e-mailElectronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, an
address bookAn address book or a name and address book is a book or a database used for storing entries called contacts. Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields...
, a
calendarA calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
, and the like.
The most widely used, general,
predictive text systems are
T9T9, which stands for Text on 9 keys, is a patented predictive text technology for mobile phones, originally developed by Tegic Communications, now part of Nuance Communications....
,
iTapiTap is a predictive text technology for mobile phones, developed by Motorola as a competitor to T9. It was designed as a replacement for the old letter mappings on phones to help with word entry. This makes some of the modern mobile phones features like text messaging and note-taking easier.When...
, and
LetterWiseLetterWise is a patented predictive text entry system keypads on handheld devices developed by Eatoni Ergonomics.- Design :Unlike other predictive text entry systems, LetterWise does not depend on a dictionary, allowing the user to type anything, yet with very high efficiency...
/
WordWiseWordWise is a patented predictive text entry system for keypads on hand held devices developed by Eatoni Ergonomics. It has an efficient mode that uses LetterWise rather than multi-tap....
. There are many unique ways to build a device that predicts text, but all predictive text systems have initial, linguistic settings that offer predictions that are re-prioritized to adapt to each user. This
learningMachine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, is a scientific discipline concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databases...
adapts, by way of the device memory, to a user's
disambiguating feedback that results in corrective key presses, such as pressing a "next" key to get to the intention. Most predictive text systems have a user database to facilitate this process.
Theoretically the number of keystrokes required per desired character in the finished writing is, on average, comparable to using a
keyboardIn computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
. This is approximately true providing that all words used are in its database, punctuation is ignored, and no input mistakes are made typing or spelling.
In practice, these factors are found to cause tremendous variance in the efficiency gain. The theoretical keystrokes per character, KSPC, of a keyboard is KSPC=1.00, and of multi-tap is KSPC=2.03. Eatoni'
LetterWiseLetterWise is a patented predictive text entry system keypads on handheld devices developed by Eatoni Ergonomics.- Design :Unlike other predictive text entry systems, LetterWise does not depend on a dictionary, allowing the user to type anything, yet with very high efficiency...
is a predictive multi-tap hybrid, which when operating on a standard telephone keypad achieves KSPC=1.15 for English.
The choice of which predictive text system is the best to use involves matching the user's preferred interface style, the user's level of learned ability to operate predictive text software, and the user's efficiency goal. There are various levels of
riskRisk is the potential that a chosen action or activity will lead to a loss . The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists . Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks"...
in
predictive text systems, versus
multi-tapMulti-tap refers to a text entry system for mobile phones.The alphabet is printed under each key in a three-letter sequence as follows; ABC under 2 key, DEF under 3 key, etc. Exceptions are the "7" key, which adds a letter , and the "9" key which includes "Z"...
systems, because the predicted text that is automatically written that provide the speed and mechanical efficiency benefit, could, if the user is not careful to review, result in transmitting misinformation. Predictive text systems take time to learn to use well, and so generally, a device's system has user options to set up the choice of multi-tap or of any one of several schools of predictive text methods.
Background
Short message serviceShort Message Service is a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices...
(SMS) permits a
mobile phoneA mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
user to send text messages, (also called messages, SMSes, texts, and txts) as a short message. The most common system of SMS text input is referred to as "
multi-tapMulti-tap refers to a text entry system for mobile phones.The alphabet is printed under each key in a three-letter sequence as follows; ABC under 2 key, DEF under 3 key, etc. Exceptions are the "7" key, which adds a letter , and the "9" key which includes "Z"...
". Using multi-tap, a key is pressed multiple times to access the list of letters on that key. For instance, pressing the "2" key once displays an "a", twice displays a "b" and three times displays a "c". To enter two successive letters that are on the same key, the user must either pause or hit a "next" button. A user can type by pressing an alphanumeric keypad without looking at the electronic equipment display. Thus, multi-tap is easy to understand, and can be used without any visual feedback. However, multi-tap is not very efficient, requiring potentially many keystrokes to enter a single letter.
In ideal
predictive text entry, all words used are in the dictionary, punctuation is ignored, no spelling mistakes are made, and no typing mistakes are made. The ideal dictionary would include all slang, proper nouns, abbreviations, urls, foreign-language words and other user-unique words. This ideal circumstance gives predicive text software the reduction in the number of key strokes a user is required to enter a word. The user presses the number corresponding to each letter and, as long as the word exists in the
predictive text dictionary, or is correctly disambiguated by non-dictionary systems, it will appear. For instance, pressing "4663" will typically be disambiguated as the word "good", provided that a linguistic database in English is currently in use, though alternatives such as home, hood, hoof are also valid disambiguations of the sequence of key strokes.
The most widely used systems of
predictive text are Tegic's
T9T9, which stands for Text on 9 keys, is a patented predictive text technology for mobile phones, originally developed by Tegic Communications, now part of Nuance Communications....
, Motorola's
iTapiTap is a predictive text technology for mobile phones, developed by Motorola as a competitor to T9. It was designed as a replacement for the old letter mappings on phones to help with word entry. This makes some of the modern mobile phones features like text messaging and note-taking easier.When...
, and the Eatoni Ergonomics'
LetterWiseLetterWise is a patented predictive text entry system keypads on handheld devices developed by Eatoni Ergonomics.- Design :Unlike other predictive text entry systems, LetterWise does not depend on a dictionary, allowing the user to type anything, yet with very high efficiency...
and
WordWiseWordWise is a patented predictive text entry system for keypads on hand held devices developed by Eatoni Ergonomics. It has an efficient mode that uses LetterWise rather than multi-tap....
. T9 and iTap use dictionaries, but Eatoni Ergonomics' products uses a disambiguation process, a set of statistical rules to recreate words from keystroke sequences. All
predictive text systems requires a linguistic database for every supported input language.
Dictionary vs. non-dictionary systems
Traditional disambiguation works by referencing a
dictionaryA dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
of commonly used words,
though Eatoni offers a dictionary-less disambiguation system.
In dictionary-based systems, as the user presses the number buttons, an algorithm searches the dictionary for a list of possible words that match the keypress combination, and offers up the most probable choice. The user can then confirm the selection and move on, or use a key to cycle through the possible combinations.
A non-dictionary system constructs words and other sequences of letters from the statistics of word parts. To attempt predictions of the intended result of keystrokes not yet entered, disambiguation may be combined with a
word completionWord completion is a common feature in web browsers and similar text entry contexts. When a user begins the entry of a frequently-used word, the computer automatically completes it, or proposes a list of choices....
facility.
Either system (disambiguation or predictive) may include a user database, which can be further classified as a "learning" system when words or phrases are entered into the user database without direct user intervention. The user database is for storing words or phrases which are not well-disambiguated by the pre-supplied database. Some disambiguation systems further attempt to correct spelling, format text or perform other automatic rewrites, with the risky effect of either enhancing or frustrating user efforts to enter text.
History
Predictive entry of text from a telephone keypad has been known at least since the 1970s (Smith and Goodwin, 1971).
Aspects of predictive text have been patented for instance by
Kondraske(1985), and
as a fully functional keypad to text system for communicating with deaf people via phone in 1988 . Predictive text was mainly used to look up names in directories over the phone, until mobile phone text messaging came into widespread use.
Example
Consider a typical phone keypad:
Suppose a user wishes to type "The". In a traditional "multi-tap" keypad entry system, it would be necessary to do the following:
- Press 8 (tuv) once to select t.
- Press 4 (ghi) twice to select h.
- Press 3 (def) twice to select e.
Meanwhile, in a phone with predictive text, it is only necessary to:
- Press 8 once to select the (tuv) group for the first character.
- Press 4 once to select the (ghi) group for the second character.
- Press 3 once to select the (def) group for the third character.
The system updates the display as each keypress is entered to show the most probable entry. In this case, predictive text reduced the number of button presses from 5 to 3. The effect is even greater with longer, more complex words.
A dictionary-based predictive system is based on hope that the desired word is in the dictionary. That hope may be misplaced if the word differs in any way from common usage—in particular, if the word is not spelled or typed correctly, is slang, or is a
proper nounA proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
. In these cases, some other mechanism must be used to enter the word.
Furthermore, the simple dictionary approach fails with
agglutinative languageAn agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
s, where a single word doesn't necessarily represent a single semantic entity.
Companies and products
Predictive text is developed and marketed in a variety of competing products.
Nuance CommunicationsNuance Communications is a multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA, that provides speech and imaging applications...
's
T9T9, which stands for Text on 9 keys, is a patented predictive text technology for mobile phones, originally developed by Tegic Communications, now part of Nuance Communications....
is the market leader. Other products include
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
's
iTapiTap is a predictive text technology for mobile phones, developed by Motorola as a competitor to T9. It was designed as a replacement for the old letter mappings on phones to help with word entry. This makes some of the modern mobile phones features like text messaging and note-taking easier.When...
, Eatoni Ergonomic's
LetterWiseLetterWise is a patented predictive text entry system keypads on handheld devices developed by Eatoni Ergonomics.- Design :Unlike other predictive text entry systems, LetterWise does not depend on a dictionary, allowing the user to type anything, yet with very high efficiency...
, (character, rather than word-based prediction),
WordWiseWordWise is a patented predictive text entry system for keypads on hand held devices developed by Eatoni Ergonomics. It has an efficient mode that uses LetterWise rather than multi-tap....
(word-based prediction without a dictionary), EQ3 (a Qwerty-like layout compatible with regular telephone keypads); Prevalent Devices's Phraze-It; Xrgomics' TenGO (a six-key reduced QWERTY keyboard system);
AdaptxtAdaptxt is a predictive text application for mobile phones, developed by KeyPoint Technologies, a UK-based software company. The application is designed to improve text entry on mobile devices by making it faster and error-free...
(considers language, context, grammar and semantics); Clevertexting (statistical nature of the language, dictionary less, dynamic key allocation); Oizea Type (temporal ambiguity); Intelab's Tauto; and WordLogic's patented Intelligent Input Platform™
http://wordlogic.com(patented, layer-based advanced text prediction, includes multi-language dictionary, spell-check, built-in Web search and more).
Textonyms
As mentioned above, the key sequence 4663 on a telephone keypad, provided with a linguistic database in English, will generally be disambiguated as the word "good". However, the same key sequence also corresponds to other words, such as "home", "gone", "hoof", "hood" and so on. Such confusions may lead to mistaken meaning even if all of the words are typed correctly and spelled correctly. For example, "Are you home?" could be rendered as "Are you good?" This fact can lead to misunderstandings. There is at least one reported case of a man stabbed to death in a fight caused by a text message rendered incorrectly by predictive text software.
Words produced by the same combination of keypresses may be referred to as "textonyms" (or "txtonyms") or "T9onyms" , though the phenomenon has nothing to do specifically with T9 per se and occurs in other systems.
Reportedly, textonyms may be adopted in regular speech; for example, the use of the word "book" to mean "cool" since book is debatably considered more frequent than "cool" by some predictive text systems,
Disambiguation failure and misspelling
Textonyms in which a disambiguation systems gives more than one dictionary word for a single sequence of keystrokes, are not the only issue, or even the most important issue, limiting the effectiveness of predictive text implementations. More important, according to the above references, are words for which the disambiguation produces a single, incorrect response. The system may, for example, respond with "Blairf" upon input of 252473, when the intended word was "Blaire" or "Claire" both of which correspond to the keystroke sequence, but are not, in this example, found by the predictive text system. When mis-typings or mis-spellings occur, they are very unlikely to be recognized correctly by a disambiguation system, though error correction mechanisms may mitigate that effect.
Concepts
- Multi-tap
Multi-tap refers to a text entry system for mobile phones.The alphabet is printed under each key in a three-letter sequence as follows; ABC under 2 key, DEF under 3 key, etc. Exceptions are the "7" key, which adds a letter , and the "9" key which includes "Z"...
- Assistive technology
Assistive technology or adaptive technology is an umbrella term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and also includes the process used in selecting, locating, and using them...
- Autocomplete
Autocomplete is a feature provided by many web browsers, e-mail programs, search engine interfaces, source code editors, database query tools, word processors, and command line interpreters. Autocomplete involves the program predicting a word or phrase that the user wants to type in without the...
- Word completion
Word completion is a common feature in web browsers and similar text entry contexts. When a user begins the entry of a frequently-used word, the computer automatically completes it, or proposes a list of choices....
- Text entry interface
A text entry interface is an interface that is used to put text information into an electronic device. For example, the QWERTY keyboard layout.-Background:...
- Input method editor
An input method is an operating system component or program that allows any data, such as keyboard strokes or mouse movements, to be received as input. In this way users can enter characters and symbols not found on their input devices...
- Text messaging
Text messaging, or texting, refers to the exchange of brief written text messages between fixed-line phone or mobile phone and fixed or portable devices over a network...
- SMS language
SMS language or textese is a term for the abbreviations and slang most commonly used due to the necessary brevity of mobile phone text messaging, in particular the widespread SMS SMS language or textese (also known as txt-speak, txtese, chatspeak, txt, txtspk, txtk, txto, texting language, txt...
- Speech-to-Text Reporter
This article is about Speech-to-Text Reporters who are human beings reproducing speech into a text format onto a computer screen at verbatim speeds for deaf or hard of hearing people to read...
Products
- T9 (predictive text)
T9, which stands for Text on 9 keys, is a patented predictive text technology for mobile phones, originally developed by Tegic Communications, now part of Nuance Communications....
- Clevertexting
- ITap
iTap is a predictive text technology for mobile phones, developed by Motorola as a competitor to T9. It was designed as a replacement for the old letter mappings on phones to help with word entry. This makes some of the modern mobile phones features like text messaging and note-taking easier.When...
- LetterWise
LetterWise is a patented predictive text entry system keypads on handheld devices developed by Eatoni Ergonomics.- Design :Unlike other predictive text entry systems, LetterWise does not depend on a dictionary, allowing the user to type anything, yet with very high efficiency...
- Q9 input method
The Q9 input method , invented by Qcode Information Technology Ltd. of Hong Kong, is an input method that uses only the number keys on a numeric keypad to input Chinese characters into a digital device. It is considered an easy method to use even though it is a "structural" input method...
- Adaptxt
Adaptxt is a predictive text application for mobile phones, developed by KeyPoint Technologies, a UK-based software company. The application is designed to improve text entry on mobile devices by making it faster and error-free...
Devices
- iPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
- LG VX9400
The LG VX9400 is a mobile phone manufactured by LG Electronics. This CDMA phone is supplied by Verizon Wireless in the United States. It was one of the first two phones on the market to support live mobile TV broadcasts using Qualcomm's MediaFLO technology...
- Nokia 5510
The Nokia 5510 is a type of 2G mobile phone released in 2001. Aside from its music playing abilities , many aspects of the phone are similar or identical to its predecessor, the Nokia 3310/3330. It has a 64 MB memory for storing audio files....
- Texas Instruments' Avigo 10
The Avigo 10 is a Personal Digital Assistant that was marketed by Texas Instruments from the years 1997 through 2000...
- List of BlackBerry Products
External links