To TIP or Not to TIP

To get around the limitation of FITALY not being intergrated with TIP, I actually use a combination of strokeIt (gesture software http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/) and AutoHotKey to manage fitaly's position on screen. I'll post my autohotkey scripts at the end of this message. I'm not sure how to export my gestures, but I bind them in strokeIt sing the "Keys - Send Keystrokes" command to send ctrl+alt+k, and other combinations which autohotkey then interprets.

StrokeIt lets you issue all kinds of commands by drawing a gesture with the stylus button pressed. For example. I usually leave FITALY on screen all the time in the lower right corner of my screen. I leave it just off of the edge a few pixels to the left so that it doesn't obscure the scroll bar of windows that are maximized. I also make FITALY transparent using autoHotKey. It does a pretty good job of staying out of the way there. However, if I want to move it, I just draw a diagonal line to the right and it jumps off screen instantly. I move fitaly off screen rather than minimizing it, because it responds faster that way. If you minimize and restore it does that whole collapse/expand to/from the task bar which is slower and annoying. Drawing the same gesture moves it back on screen.

In addition I also have another gesture, left/down which moves fitaly to where my mouse is. So rather than clicking the TIP button, I can draw my gesture on screen, and fitaly jumps there. Works even in applications that don't render TIP properly. However, in reality I hardly ever do this, as it's "an extra click" and I can get away with using FITALY from the corner.

There is one downside to leaving fitaly in the lower right corner, which is that I can't see my output a lot of times when I'm tapping because the "textbox" or whatever isn't neccsarily in my visual field. So, I tap a little slower to prevent mistakes.

One solution that I've toyed with is to make a preview window that displays your "current word" like TIP does in handwriting modes. IOW, it would display all of the recent letters you've typed, and then "clear" when you hit space/enter/etc. This way, you can keep your eyes on FITALY for maximal tapping speed and still see any mistakes you might make. Of course there needs to be an option to disable it so that passwords don't get displayed on screen. This is another feature I'd love to see as a part of FITALY proper. I've tried to implement in autohotkey, but couldn't quite get it to work.

>>>Autohotkey script follows
^!r::
FitalyHere()
return

^!f::
InitFitaly()
return

^!z::
FitalyHere()
return

^!h::
ToggleFitaly()
return

InitFitaly()
{
IfWinExist ahk_class FitalyMainWindow
{
WinActivate
}
else
{
Run "c:\program files\textware\fitaly2005\fitaly2005.exe"
Sleep 500
WinActivate ahk_class FitalyMainWindow
}
WinSet, Transparent, 150, ahk_class FitalyMainWindow
WinMove, ahk_class FitalyMainWindow, , 686 , 620
WinSet, Transparent, 150, ahk_class ExpanderMainWindow
return
}

ToggleFitaly()
{
WinGetPos , X, Y, Width, Height, ahk_class FitalyMainWindow, , ,
if ((X=686) && (Y=620))
{
WinMove, ahk_class FitalyMainWindow, , 1025 , 620
}
else
{
WinMove, ahk_class FitalyMainWindow, , 686 , 620
}
return
}

FitalyHere()
{
CoordMode, mouse, screen
MouseGetPos, OutputVarX, OutputVarY, OutputVarWin, OutputVarControl, 1

WinMove, ahk_class FitalyMainWindow, , OutputVarX - 324 , OutputVarY
return
}