Mixed reaction

Overlooking that apparently we're lucky to have what we have [ :-( ], my first thought is "Have you seen MessagEase"... However, while sliding is great for occasional shifted letters and symbol strokes in Fitaly, for me a lot of strokes are no-no. It hurts the hand, which I do have more of a problem with than some people. With Fitaly the balance is good, and if I want to shift WHOLE WORDS then I usually use the shift button. There's also an accuracy deficit in strokes, I find. So with MessagEase there are too many strokes - for me.

I also feel that stroking from a menu slows things down; most of the time with Fitaly, I am not looking at what I'm doing - I'm looking at what I'm about to do. I make an exception for strokes for long inputs - I have one for "Robert Carnegie", one for "rja.carnegie@excite.com" - because it's worth taking time on those.

My stroke file, which I'll probably post shortly, is with a few exceptions that don't fit: north/northeast/east = capital letter (or lower case if Shift is on), or number on punc/number cells; northwest/west/southwest = symbol from the 123 layout, or shifted punctuation mark; southeast/south = shifted 123 symbol, or function keys F1 to F10 from the punc/number set. It means everything's there and it's easier to remember, even if I need ‡ approximately never ;-) A left-handed user might want to swap easts and wests. And I could assign some tiles to longer menus with more strokes. Application context sensitivity would be nice too - but another way to do that would be to use a tool like free AutoHotkey as an intermediate; AHk now can respond differently depending on which application is on top.

I do agree that a menu placed on the letter would be sweeter than up at the top. It breaches coordination. I'd like it to open instantly centred on where the letter is, or maybe just above. But obstacles include getting my older Tablet to respond "instantly". ;-) Starting mid-list, though, only works for me if the north and south, or east and west stroke sets are both shown in a list.

And I think that menu text that isn't what will be actually sent may be useful. For instance, if I want Fitaly to type my mailing address... But again, AutoHotkey as intermediary could do that. AHk could also perform functions other than typing, such as "launch or switch to an application".