OptiKey

New:

• Changed crash message again.
• Prevent auto-restart on crash (as can cause crash looping).

Fixed:

• Application crashed when saving user configuration changes - attempt 2.

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Updated crash message to ask people to try disabling their anti-virus software.

Fixed:

• Application crashed when disabling Multi-key selection from management console
• Application crashed when saving user configuration changes (storing dock thickness can result in "The configuration file has been changed by another program"). IF YOU STILL EXPERIENCE CRASHES PLEASE TRY TEMPORARILY DISABLING YOUR ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAM AS SOME CAN CAUSE ISSUES (I'm looking at you McAfee). Please drop me an email if this works so I can attempt to solve this problem.

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• New window modes: floating and docked
• Complete mouse keyboard redesign - lots of new functionality and ability to collapse OptiKey if docked
• Intelligently suppress auto-caps where it is probably unhelpful (e.g. on numeric & symbol keyboards) - setting to enable/disable
• Display text hint when a symbol key is current
• Ability to stop in-progress speech
• Include current in-progress word in the suggestion list - enabling auto-space if enabled
• Swapped Clear and AddToDictionary key positions on all keyboards
• Play an error tone (no message) when Add To Dictionary is pressed with nothing in the scratchpad
• Make yes/no buttons smaller and require a more deliberate look (to prevent accidental calibration, for example) & make the current text bigger on both keys
• New setting to disable multi-key selection
• New quit key on menu
• New Conversation keyboard and ConversationOnly mode
• Added simplified numbers & symbols keyboard to conversation mode
• Automatically turn on/off 'Simulate Key Strokes' behaviour depending on the current keyboard - introducing the idea of "standard" and "conversation" modes
• Multi-key selection and mouse magnifier key states will be persisted between restarts if either key is locked down (multi-key selection key stored by mode; "standard" or "conversation")
• Management Console can be opened with SHIFT+ALT+M also (to mitigate the situation when shift has been pressed down by auto-caps)
• Display a key selection animation when automatically pressing/releasing a key
• Rewritten auto-complete suggestions to improve performance - includes ability to change their casing based on the state of the shift key
• Automatically set & restore opacity when moving to/from conversation keyboards (to ensure that conversation mode is always fully opaque)
• State (Text, key states, etc) stored/restored when moving between "standard" and "conversation" modes
• Memory usage optimisation by releasing event hooks when unloading keys
• Logging improvements

Fixed:

• Suppress duplicate auto-complete suggestions caused by altering the word casings, e.g. "am" and "AM" both changed to lower
• Auto space fixed when swapping in a suggestion following a backspace
• Volume problems fixed when playing sound effects (voice volume was being impacted)
• Move and click/scroll mouse operations had sporadic failures
• Output a single backspace if BackMany is pressed with an empty scratchpad, as per the BackOne behaviour
• Possible crash when generating auto-complete suggestions

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• None

Fixed:

• Bug fix - User setting (key/point selection trigger key) can cause a crash when opening the management console if localised, e.g. to German.

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Added support for the Tobii PCEye Go tracker (firmware version 1.1.5 or later required)
• Changed default value for 'Minimum dwell time on a key to include in capture (ms)' to 250ms (quarter of a second). This improves matching multi-key selections on very short words, e.g. "is".

Fixed:

• Bug fix - main window state should not be persisted if OptiKey is maximised on close
• Bug fix - Do not restore minimised windows when "arranging other windows" horizontally/vertically
• Bug fix - changed smtp server used when sending crash reports as GMail can block access from unknown locations

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Add sleep key to each main keyboard (Alpha, Numbers & Symbols, Diacritics, Currencies, Physical Keys)

Fixed:

• Bug fix - 'arrange other windows' functions should not resize all windows as this can cause problems, for example with the Tobii EyeX application
• Bug fix - mouse double click sound was incorrect

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Ability to maximise other windows - useful to restore full screen applications such as the Windows 8 start menu and Windows Store apps

Fixed:

• None

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Ability to minimise OptiKey to screen edges and corners
• Ability to arrange other windows around OptiKey both horizontally and vertically
• Resume abandoned fixation without having to lock on again with new setting
• Decrease & increase opacity key positions swapped on menu

Fixed:

• Bug fix - stack overflow possible when sound file cannot be found

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Improvement to progress indicator behaviours, which now support 3 modes: 'Fill Pie', 'Grow' and 'Shrink' with configurable start and end size proportions
• Added handling of corrupt user settings

Fixed:

• None

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Ability to configure the progress indicator as you make key or point selections. Fill a pie chart, shrink, or both. New settings in the Pointing & Selecting tab of the Management Console.

Fixed:

• Keyboard could react to user input when it should have been paused, e.g. if you open the Management Console while the splash screen is visible, when the splash screen closes the keyboard will become responsive event though the Management Console is still open.
• Modified default settings to make OptiKey appear slower and more deliberate when making selections.
• Auto complete word should also match phrases on 1st letter of each word, as well as on the letters of the phrase

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• None

Fixed:

• Multi-key selection matching improved - threshold not calculated correctly for short words.

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• None

Fixed:

• Multi-key selection was possible from diacritical letters, which does not make sense and could leave the user stuck in a capture. Thanks for the feedback Sammy.

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Added new sounds
• Added ability to set volume on each sound
• Added ability to preview each sound from the Management Console

Fixed:

• None

Deprecated:

• None

NOTE: If you already have OptiKey installed then this is a breaking update! The sound effect files have been renamed. Please open the Management Console (ALT+M), navigate to the 'Sounds' tab and for each blank/missing sound effect choose a sound, then click OK.

New:

• Added alternative sounds for multi-key selection start/end

Fixed:

• Fixed how word usage counts are tracked when mutliple cased versions exist in the dictionary

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Improvement to efficiency of multi-key selection matching
• Upon a crash OptiKey will automatically attempt to restart

Fixed:

• None

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Improvement to multi-key selection matching for short words

Fixed:

• None

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• None

Fixed:

• Multi-key selection with no matches could cause crash.

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Added version information to application title and splash screen
• Improved multi-key capture matching algorithm
• Make multi-key capture tol tri-state allowing the user to generally spell words, but capture longer words in an ad-hoc manner

Fixed:

• Changed default mulit-key selection trigger stop signal to keyboard key/mouse button release

Deprecated:

• None

New:

• Convert mouse magnify key to be tri-state, making it easier to use it for one off precision mouse actions.
• Small enhancement to crash window message.
• Change default number of suggestions to 21 (to fill 5 sets of 4 suggestions + best match).
• When using the backspace keys to clear the scratchpad completely shift is now auto pressed if appropriate (this behaviour is in line with the Clear key).
• Layout changes to Standard and Speech Only keyboard sets, including adding Simulate Mouse on all Standard keyboards (Sleep key moved to menu).
• Change layout on position, size, and mouse keyboards.
• New icons for XofX keys, alpha keyboard and numbers & symbols key.
• New DisableKeyboardSimulationWhileMouseKeyboardIsOpen setting to prevent modifier keys from impacting mouse actions. Turn off this setting if you want to combine modifier keys and mouse actions.
• New setting to control how long toast notifications are shown for - added to Visuals tab in Management Console.
• Code tidy around mouse actions.

Fixed:

• Possibility for crash when generating auto complete suggestions.

Deprecated:

• No longer persist the state of the 'simulate keystrokes' key between restarts. Now the key will always be released/off when you start the application.
• Multi-key selection key is no longer released when switching to Speech Only mode as this seems unnecessary.

New:

• Increased size of American, British and Canadian dictionary word lists
• Add current language to startup splash screen
• Slight reduction in toast notification display time
• Sharpened the main icon

Fixed:

• None

Deprecated:

• None