Usage

Tapir is written in Python. You can start Tapir by changing to the directory into which Tapir was extracted and invoking Python from the command line:

% cd tapir-2.0
% python tapir.py

Tapir's buttons can either be selected by pointing and clicking on them, or by dwell-selection, if you have dwell-selection enabled on your computer system.

Tapir allows you to write efficiently using just 16 buttons.

In its default Word mode, which is like the predictive text mode on many mobile phones, you simply select the buttons which contain the letters which spell what you intend to write, so to spell hello, select the buttons ghi, def, jkl, jkl and mno. Tapir will work out a list of words consistent with that selection and display them at the right hand side; the most probable word is tentatively displayed in the main text box at the top.

If the most probable word is the word you wanted, simply keep writing, by pressing the space key or the punctuation key.

If the most probable word is not the one you wanted, there are three ways to choose from the alternatives:

• The standard way (which is used on many mobile phones) is to select the Next button, which offers the next word on the list. Keep pressing Next until the desired word appears.
• Alternatively, the user may press the Words button, which causes the 15 most probable words to be displayed on 15 of the keys. (The 16th key is the Back key, which can be used to return to the normal key-layout.) If Tapir can't think of as many as 15 words consistent with what the user wrote then some of the spare keys may be used to display word-completions. When the user selects a word, Tapir returns to the normal key-layout. The Next and Words buttons may be used in combination: if the user presses Next a few times, then selects Words, the Word choices displayed on the buttons are the 15 starting from the one that was highlighted.
• As a final option, users who have the ability to select individual words from the right-hand word-list display may click on their preferred word there.

In Spell mode, which is like the multitap mode of many mobile phones, you can spell arbitary words letter by letter; each letter is selected by pressing its key an appropriate number of times. If the letter you want is the first in the list of letters on a button, just press that button once, if it is the second, then press twice, so to select s, press the button labelled pqrs four times.

If you want to spell a word with a double letter then, the way Tapir ought to work is it should have a time-out, after which the user can start pressing the same key. However, Tapir (as of December 2012) has a bug, and does not.

To exit Tapir, find the Quit button under Actions, and confirm. The other Actions include simple cut and paste editing, and moving the cursor in the Text Output box.

In Settings, the font and inter-button spacing (the gaps between the buttons) can be changed. Also, rather than displaying the list of probable words, including words longer than the number of characters typed so far, one can choose to display just the combinations of letters allowed by the current set of button presses. The Hide Mouse option allows you to make the mouse invisible when it is in the Tapir window. This may be a useful option for people using a gaze-tracker, who sometimes find the displayed mouse distracting. Select Main to return to Tapir's main screen.