Penfriend W3

Excellent word prediction, speech feedback, and on-screen keyboard for Windows 95, 98, Me and 3.1

Approved Product

Penfriend W3 provides the acclaimed performance of the Penfriend range on older versions of Microsoft Windows. It combines terrific performance with a range of well chosen features and surprising ease of use. As with all Penfriend Ltd products, it brings users benefits including the confidence to write more, the accuracy to write what they mean, and the speed to write more in the time available. It can be used with almost any word processor, as it intercepts and simulates messages from the keyboard to the application.

Features

Word Prediction

Penfriend W3's core strength is in predicting the next word you want to write. It does this using a dictionary of known words, along with detailed knowledge of when they are likely to be used, their grammatical type, words you have used before, and so on. Every time you type a letter, it comes up with a new list of the most likely words which fit your letters. Choosing one is a simple matter of pressing one more button, or clicking on the word with the mouse. If you're not sure how to read it, you can hear it spoken before you choose a word.

Speech Feedback

Penfriend optionally comes with speech feedback; the ability to read aloud the words on your screen, including words that you haven't written yet! Penfriend W3 uses Jon Duddington's speech engine to produce clear British-English words.

It can be configured to speak each letter as it is typed, each word as it is completed, and each sentence. It can read words from the prediction list when you point at them, when you choose them, or automatically when they change. It can also read back whole paragraphs (or more) of text from other applications using the clipboard. This might be your document, a web page, an email, or almost anything else.

While speaking text from the clipboard, a window can be shown which follows the voice, highlighting each word as it goes. You can click on a word to hear it again, or to speak a fragment of the text.

The optional speech engine requires a genuine SoundBlaster sound card in your computer, although it may also work with some others.

On-screen Keyboard

For people either with physical disabilities affecting their use of a keyboard, or for those who do not want to glance repeatedly between the screen and keyboard, Penfriend XP offers an on-screen keyboard. Its straightforward design mirrors key features of a conventional QWERTY keyboard.

For people with a more specialised on-screen keyboard, Penfriend can work with Clicker to predict with custom-designed on-screen keyboards which support switch access.

Lexicon Editing

Penfriend doesn't claim to know all the words you want to write in advance, but it is very good at learning them. Every word you type is analysed, and Penfriend can learn those it doesn't recognise. Depending on your spelling, you might ask for new words to be predicted immediately (as appropriate), or perhaps just to be remembered and then checked by a teacher.

Penfriend holds new words in a specially marked list, so that you can easily review the ones it has learnt recently. There are various tools for manipulating these, such as deleting them all en masse.

As well as learning new words, Penfriend keeps track of the ones you've used, and your style of writing. This all helps to predict the right words next time!

Sensible Options

Penfriend W3 makes its options easy to understand. There are enough to give you the choices you need for the people you work with, but each makes sense, giving you flexibility and comprehension.

The colours of text, in the prediction window and the on-screen keyboard, can be adjusted. The colour of highlighted words, both text and background, can be controlled separately from the normal words. Whether Penfriend learns new words, predicts them immediately, applies 'smart punctuation', or speaks as you type, can all be decided by you. A document included when you buy the system explains which options would help most.

Further, the options are stored per user rather than for the whole computer. This means you can have several people with different special needs using the same system, but each one gets it configured especially for them.

For a detailed explanation of the options, download the free demonstration and read the on-line help.

Abbreviation Expansion

As well as predicting words using the letters you type, Penfriend can store phrases or other words, assigned to special codes. For example, 'pfl' might be an abbreviation for 'Penfriend Ltd'. When you type the short code and press Space, Penfriend can automatically replace it. This can speed up writing of commonly used phrases or even sentences. Naturally, you can control the abbreviations yourself, adding and removing them at will.

Smart Punctuation

When you finish a sentence, or use almost any punctuation mark, Penfriend can help you to get it right. Although it normally puts a space after predicted words, it moves that to after the punctuation, and capitalises your next letter. Little things like this give writers the confidence to put their thoughts on paper.

Clicker Integration

As well as predicting words directly in to your word processor, Penfriend W3 can work with Clicker, from Crick Software and other applications to provide its prediction engine without the user needing to interact with Penfriend directly.

Try It!

If you're as keen as most of our readers, you can download our free demonstration version, or go straight to the sales page to buy your own copy.