What is ritePen?
ritePen Basics
How Does ritePen Work?
Entering Text
Gestures
Word Menu
Handwritten Shortcuts
User Dictionary
Main Menu
Settings
Floating Toolbar
Auto-Upgrades
ritePen is an easy-to-use and powerful handwriting recognition application. It
allows you to write anywhere on the screen of your Tablet PC, on an electronic
whiteboard, with your pen tablet, or even with a mouse or on a touchpad. ritePen
instantly converts your handwriting into text and enters the text into any
Windows application, such as Microsoft Word, Notepad, Excel, Outlook, File
Manager, Internet Explorer, etc. ritePen also allows pen control of your
applications and desktop via ink commands.
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Understands any handwritten style, does not require learning or
training. Just write continuously, in whole sentences, on multiple lines of
text, anywhere on the screen. Your writing will be automatically segmented into words, recognized and entered
into the needed document or application.
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Supports simple and reliable gestures for common operations
like adding a line break or space, deleting a wrong letter, copying and pasting,
or adding punctuation and special signs via the pop-up keyboard. It also allows
you to choose variants of recognized words from the answer list.
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Does not interfere with your regular use of a PC. Unlike other
pen input applications, it intelligently detects scrollbars, menus, resizing
areas, and other navigational and designated elements of application windows and
allows seamless manipulation and navigation within your desktop application.
ritePen application can also be manually switched between writing and mouse mode
by single tap.
- ritePen software employs
advanced dictionary technology. In addition to large
main dictionary which
includes common words, key medical terms, personal and geographical names, you can always add
your own personal or industry specific terms to further increase recognition accuracy.
You can simply type in new words into the custom user dictionary or import them from
any text files or from the system
clipboard.
- This version of
ritePen software recognizes handwriting in seven languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese,
Russian, and Spanish. Simply switch your keyboard layout to another
language and write - ritePen application will translate text in the currently
active language as if you were typing. More
languages are under development.
- With ritePen, you can automate
all your routine desktop tasks by creating and using Handwritten Shortcuts (pen macros, ink commands):
putting your signature in a document, pasting common texts without looking for
them, opening favorite websites or frequently used documents are now at your
fingertips.
- Unlike other handwriting
recognition utilities, ritePen seamlessly works with remote applications over Citrix and RDP protocols,
which is important for data input in many industries.
- When ritePen software is
running on a Tablet PC or a Windows Vista PC, it further improves recognition
accuracy by combining our riteScript technology with the embedded handwriting recognition
engine, providing industry's best recognition accuracy.
We are constantly
improving ritePen's features, recognition accuracy and usability.
You can check for new upgrades at any time by clicking the Check For Upgrade
button in the About box.
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ritePen receives your handwriting, stroke by stroke, from a pen-enabled device
and passes the strokes to the advanced "third generation" riteScript®
handwriting recognition engine, which converts your handwriting into text. You
write as you normally do, in words and phrases, and riteScript technology
automatically segments your handwriting into words and lines. When you finished
writing, ritePen receives the recognized text from riteScript, deletes
handwritten strokes from the screen, and enters the text into the active
text-enabled application, placing the text at the current position of the
cursor. ritePen also recognizes your gestures
to perform common operations like adding a space or a
line break, deleting wrong symbols, or offering a list of answers. ritePen does
not interfere with your navigation and control operations, such as
pointing and clicking, dragging application windows, selecting portions of text,
etc. When you write and encircle a word, ritePen interprets it as a handwritten
shortcut and looks for that word in your list of pen macros (ink commands) to execute the corresponding action.
Note. ritePen does not allow
writing when a single Ctrl or a single Shift key is permanently pressed; this is done intentionally
to prevent potential interference with the operation of multiple selection in
popular applications which is often performed via Ctrl-Click and Shift-Click.
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Launch ritePen by opening it from the Start>Programs menu>EverNote>ritePen. The
ritePen notification icon
appears in the Windows Taskbar. Now ritePen is ready to accept your writing
anywhere on the screen and convert it into text. Open any text-enabled
application, for example, Notepad, and write a few words on the screen.
Note the screen cursor changing to the pen style as you start writing. Once you
complete writing, the converted text appears in the Notepad and your handwriting
disappears from the screen.
What if you want to drag a window of an application or scroll through a
document? ritePen will not interfere with your actions in most Windows
applications. In other words, if you drag an application window holding your pen
on its title bar, or scroll the window using your pen, or press menu or toolbar
buttons, your actions will not be interpreted as writing a new word. For this
reason, you should always start a new portion of your writing outside
title bars, scrollbars, toolbars or menus of application windows. However, you
can freely cross all such bars and menus while you are writing.
In order to select a word in the typed text, double tap on it. To select
a fragment of the text, tap and hold at the beginning of selection area. Then
drag the pen, as you typically do with a mouse. The initial holding time is
slightly longer than with a mouse, because ritePen needs a short time to realize
that you intended selection and not writing. Sometimes, a line may be drawn
through your selected fragment of the text; stop dragging at the end of your
selection, continue holding the pen down until the line disappears and turns
into the selection. If your work involves extensive text selection, you may
choose to temporarily disable ritePen by tapping on its notification icon in the
taskbar or ritePen toolbar. Its appearance will change to
. Tap on
the icon again to re-enable ritePen
.
Note. In order to enter recognized handwritten text into the Microsoft Vista Search box located at the bottom of the Start Menu, you have to begin writing within that box;
then you can continue writing anywhere on the screen until you stop and the text is recognized.
You
may choose to use your digital pen as the only writing tool, while your mouse,
touchpad, trackball and other "navigational" devices will not produce digital
ink input even when ritePen's writing mode is on. To enable this feature, check
the box Use only pen for input in Settings>General. Your pen will
still perform intelligent navigation of the desktop as explained above.
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ritePen allows basic pen-based text editing via simple gestures, so you can perform most common editing operations without touching the keyboard.
Each gesture must be written in one
continuous stroke, as shown in the table below. The starting dot shows the
beginning point of each stroke.
 |
Line break (down then left, horizontal part at least twice as long as the
vertical one)
Inserts line break at the current position of the text cursor in the active
application.
|
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Space (down then right, horizontal part at least twice as long as the
vertical one)
Inserts space at the current cursor position.
|
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Tab (up then right, horizontal part at least twice as long as the
vertical one)
Inserts tab at the current cursor position.
|
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Undo (up then left, horizontal part at least twice as long as the
vertical one)
Undoes the previous action(s).
|
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Backspace (right to left, not too short, keep the stroke horizontal)
Deletes the symbol immediately preceding the current position of the text cursor
or the selected text in the active application.
Note. This gesture may conflict with the Back gesture of Pen
Flicks. You might want to disable the Back gesture in Pen Flicks
or write your Backspace gestures slower to be recognized
by ritePen.
|
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WordMenu (down then up, writing over the downward part; keep the strokes
vertical)
Retrieves the list of answers for all words for the most recent portion of your
writing.
|
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Punctuation pane (up then down, writing over the upward part; keep the
strokes vertical)
Launches the pane with punctuation signs, special symbols and navigation keys.
Click on a symbol to add it to the text at the current cursor position.
|
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Copy (left then right, writing over the leftward part; keep the strokes
horizontal)
Copies the selected object into the system clipboard (same as pressing Ctrl-C)
|
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Cut (right then left, writing over the rightward part; keep the strokes
horizontal)
Cuts the selected object into the system clipboard (same as pressing Ctrl-X).
|
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Paste (right-up then right-down, symmetrical, at the angle of about 45
degrees)
Pastes an object from the system clipboard to the current cursor position of the
active window (same as pressing Ctrl-V).
|
Additionally, the Capitalization gesture - a straight-up
vertical stroke alternating the letter case, is available in the Word Menu as
explained in the next section.
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ritePen WordMenu displays the list of alternative recognition answers and allows
correcting recognized text and selecting other answers for recognized words. It lists
the best answer for each word in the top line and alternatives below in smaller
font. Click on any item
to substitute the top word with the chosen one.
If there are no correct answers in the list you can correct words in the top
(boldfaced) line by directly overwriting incorrect letters:
(When correcting multiple letters at once, we recommend
writing them in the left-to-right order.) If you don't find correct words in the WordMenu but your
top answer has just a couple of letters misspelled,
you can try letter alternatives by clicking on such misrecognized letters, as illustrated below:
You can also use gestures to add space, remove letters, and capitalize them. All
these gestures are "positional": the desired action happens at the point where
the gesture was started. For example, to add a space before the letter, draw the Space
gesture starting in the middle of the letter; to delete a letter, draw the Backspace gesture starting
in the middle of that letter, as shown below:
Use the "capitalize" gesture (a
line straight up) to alternate the letter case (this gesture started from the
capital letter 'W' up will turn it into the lower case 'w').
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The WordMenu window normally appears near the current position of the mouse
pointer and then slowly fades away (you can customize the fade-out time in Settings>WordMenu).
You may pin its position to a desired location on the screen by clicking the "pin" icon in the
left top corner of the window. After that, you may drag the window where you want it to be placed on
the screen using the top bar.
- To make sure your changes in the Word Menu
are automatically sent to the target application, check the "Auto apply changes" option in
the WordMenu tab of the Settings dialog. If this option is disabled, a "checkmark" icon will
appear in the top right corner of the WordMenu window; you would have to click on that icon to apply the changes once you are done with
editing.
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Use the 'x' button in the top right corner of the WordMenu window to close it.
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In addition to seamless
data input, ritePen automates your routine desktop tasks such as application
launch, opening documents, entering standard texts and many other operations.
You can assign a handwritten shortcut (pen macro, ink command) to
any such operation; then, all it takes to perform the operation is writing and
encircling a shortcut. For example, if a letter "h" is assigned to opening your
home page in the default browser, then writing and encircling the letter will
launch the browser and jump to the website as illustrated below.
Another helpful example is
adding your signature to a document by writing and encircling the shortcut
"sign":
You can also use handwritten shortcuts to abbreviate long and frequently used
words, to open repeatedly used documents or paste frequently used texts, etc.
In addition to general text, handwritten shortcuts can display current date and
time.
Note. ritePen Pro has substantially broader capabilities of handwritten
shortcuts. It allows emulating any keyboard activities, including special and
functional keys, adds a few helpful commands, etc. Keep in mind that your
profiles designed in ritePen Pro may
not work in the standard edition of ritePen.
Creating
and editing handwritten shortcuts is easy: use the Macros tab in ritePen Settings as explained below.
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ritePen recognizes your handwriting in any language using large Main Dictionary
for that language. Such dictionaries come with ritePen and include many dozens
or even hundreds of thousands of common words and proper names; they are
sufficient for accurate recognition of generic handwritten texts. Still, many users
need to recognize special or personal "terms", such
as drug names, personal emails, scientific terms, names of friends and
co-workers, industry or company specific product names, etc.
To facilitate this need, ritePen includes an easy method of creating and
editing custom User Dictionary for any supported language.
You can add words to the User Dictionary manually at any time; import then
from text files, such as clinical reports, contracts, educational materials;
import new terms directly from the Windows Clipboard or from the Microsoft
Office Outlook's Personal Address Book; you can also edit the list of words.
ritePen will automatically analyze your text source and extract only
new terms from the imported file. You will see a preview window with the words absent
in the main dictionary and in the previously created portion of
the User Dictionary. With this incremental method of building User Dictionary
based on your real-life experiences, you can avoid excessive research and
overloading User Dictionary with large word sets that can slow down
handwriting recognition and degrade its accuracy.
Below is an illustration of importing from the text file (in this case, clinical
report).
On the screenshot, you can see the
User Dictionary on the left and the list of new words extracted from a text file in
the Import Words To User Dictionary window.
Details on building and editing
User Dictionary are presented in the
Settings>Dictionary section below.
Note. ritePen Pro allows multiple user dictionaries, comes with a broad set of pre-defined "lexicons"
and supports context aware recognition where pre-defined lexicons and user dictionaries are combined into "recognition profiles"
and assigned to forms fields and other applications for additional gain in recognition accuracy.
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Right-click or tap and hold ritePen notification icon, or right-click ritePen
Toolbar to open Main Menu.
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Pen On is checked when writing mode of ritePen is enabled and unchecked
otherwise.
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Settings opens the ritePen settings tabbed dialog,
providing customization options.
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Toolbar allows displaying or hiding the ritePen Toolbar.
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Help displays this reference page.
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About displays copyright and version information about the product and its
components and allows checking for product upgrades.
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Check for Upgrade connects to ritePen's online auto-upgrade system to check
for available product upgrades.
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Close ritePen quits the application.
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After calling up the ritePen Settings dialog box, you can change the following
settings:
General, Ink,
Recognizer, Dictionary,
WordMenu, and Macros.
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General
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Timeout for Selection.
When you select a portion of text by pressing and dragging your pen across the
selection, ritePen briefly draws an ink stroke. By changing the Timeout for
Selection, you shorten the time that stroke appears on the screen before it
reverts into selection.
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Timeout for Writing.
When you are entering text using ritePen, the application recognizes your
writing continuously. When you lift a pen after you have completed a portion of
writing and want the text to appear in the target application, ritePen waits for
a short while to give you the opportunity to "dot your i's and cross your t's".
In order to speed up the recognition process, you may shorten this time
interval. In case you shorten the Timeout for Writing, make sure that the
timeout is still sufficient for you with your individual writing speed to put
the dots/crosses/diacritic signs where they belong.
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Show Intro Screen.
If selected (check-marked by default), ritePen displays the introductory splash screen on application
start.
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Start ritePen when Windows starts. Adds ritePen to the Startup program group and ensures its automatic launch after system reboot.
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Start ritePen in Pen On mode.
This choice is active (check-marked) by default, so that starting ritePen
initiates the Pen On mode and ritePen accepts and recognizes handwriting.
Removing the checkmark instructs ritePen to start in the Pen Off (Mouse On)
mode. To turn it on, click the ritePen tray icon to activate writing and
recognition.
Note: You can also force ritePen to start in (or switch to) pen Off or On
mode by specifying the command line key "/0" or "/1" after the name of its
executable (e.g. "ritePen.exe /0" to switch the pen mode to off).
Additionally, you can specify the parameter "/2" to toggle ritePen between the
Pen Off and Pen On modes, which is especially helpful if you are using a
hardware button to switch writing on and off. This method of
switching ritePen mode can be used even if ritePen is already running
(alternatively, you can send a pre-defined Windows message to the application to
alter its state or query what state it is in now).
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Check for auto-upgrades.
If selected (check-marked by default), ritePen periodically connects to our server and notifies you if new upgrades are available.
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Use only pen for input. When enabled, this option suppresses writing with a
mouse, trackball, touchscreen and other navigational devices and allows writing
only with the pen. This is helpful, for example, on convertible Tablet PCs and
Ultra-Mobile PCs where users wish to fully utilize pen in the tablet mode and avoid writing in the
keyboard mode.
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Auto Pen Off, if idle. When enabled, causes ritePen to automatically
turn writing mode off after the specified time without writing has elapsed. This
option is helpful if you are predominantly using your pen as a pointing and
navigation tool and only occasionally input text via ritePen. Note that you have
to turn back the pen mode manually.
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Ink
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Pen Style.
Clicking on the Pencil or Pen icon changes the appearance of handwriting on the
screen between the standard "pencil" look and the calligraphy pen.
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Pen Size. Select pen thickness between Fine, Thin, Medium, or Thick.
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Pen Colors. Choose from 32 different ink colors.
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Recognition
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Installed recognition engines. This version of ritePen can recognize English,
French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish handwriting. ritePen can be installed with
different language sets. The set of installed engines is displayed in the above
box for the information purpose. The active language for which recognition is currently
performed is defined by the layout of system keyboard currently present on your
PC; for example, switching keyboard layout from English to French
instructs ritePen to switch handwriting recognition engine between these languages.
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Enable Recognizer Fusion.
When ritePen works on a Tablet PC or on a Windows
Vista PC, it fuses (combines) its riteScript handwriting recognition engine
with the "embedded" system
recognizer, thus improving the recognition accuracy compared
with each of the two engines. You can optionally
switch off the fusion of recognition engines, in which case your
handwriting will be recognized by the riteScript engine alone.
Note: On non-Tablet PC and non-Windows Vista computers this option is not available
and the item is grayed out. Recognizer fusion is currently available for
English language only.
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Add Space After Text.
When enabled, ritePen will add a space after each recognized
word. You may disable this option to recognize certain data types, such as Web addresses or emails, where spaces
between words are unwelcome. You may
always add a space using the space gesture.
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Separate Letters Mode.
Check this box if you write in separate letters
and never use cursive, connected handwriting
(this option is especially important
when you
are filling out handwritten forms with grid or "comb" fields). This increases recognition accuracy for
disconnected "separate letters" writing, but will fail the recognition of connected script.
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Dictionary
This page allows you to modify contents of the custom User Dictionary for a particular language
by adding, removing and editing new words manually, as well as importing them
from text files, Outlook's Personal Address Book, or Windows Clipboard.
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Language. Choose the language of the dictionary you want to modify.
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Word List. Total number of words in the User Dictionary is displayed on top
of the scrollable word list.
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Edit User Dictionary. Click this button to open Edit User Dictionary panel:
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User Dictionary. Editable list of dictionary entries on the left side of
the panel. You can
add, delete or correct words in the list like in a regular text editor.
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Import section. Allows importing words into the User Dictionary from text files,
Outlook Personal Address Book, and Windows Clipboard.
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More >>. This button opens panel with additional controls of word importing from text sources.
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Context help: Prompts context dependent actions as you browse through the Edit User Dictionary Panel.
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[Import] From Text File button. You can import words from any text source (clinical report, homework assignment, contract, etc.) saved as .txt file.
When you click the "From Text File" button, you are offered file selection dialog. After you select the file, ritePen splits it into words, checks
the presence of each word in the Main Dictionary and in the existing portion of User Dictionary, and lists all new words in the preview Import Words To User Dictionary
window
You can edit, remove or add new words in the preview window and add them to the User Dictionary by clicking the "Accept" button.
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[Import] From Outlook button. If you are using Microsoft Office Outlook, you can import all names and emails from
your Personal Address Book into the User Dictionary. After pressing on this button, ritePen extracts names and emails from the address book,
checks their presence in the existing vocabularies, and displays all new words in the "Import Words To User Dictionary" window, similarly to importing from text file.
Same as previously, you can edit, remove or add new words in the preview window and add them to the User Dictionary by clicking the "Accept" button.
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[Import] From Clipboard button. Similarly to two previous items, you can
capture the text into Windows Clipboard (for example, selected portion of a web
page or a document) and pres this button to add to User Dictionary all new words
contained in that text.
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WordMenu
These settings control the behavior of the WordMenu pop-up
window which allows quick correction of misrecognized words and selection of
alternative answers from the list.
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Font size. Letter size for answers in the WordMenu.
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Instantly apply changes. When you make changes to the recognized text in the
WordMenu window, they can be sent automatically to the target application.
Alternatively, you can first make all changes and then click the "checkmark" icon
in the top right corner of the WordMenu window to apply all changes in a single
action.
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Auto-expand. When this option is checked, WordMenu will include all feasible
recognition alternatives for each recognized word and enable selection from the list of alternatives.
If unchecked, only a single line with top alternatives will be displayed;
letters can be corrected manually as
explained above.
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Show after recognition. If checked, the WordMenu window will pop-up after each ritePen's recognition session and will fade-off
after the timeout indicated in the next line. If unchecked, WordMenu will
not automatically appear on the screen: it will take a WordMenu gesture or
a click on the WordMenu button in the Toolbar to call up the window.
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Macros
These settings allow creation and editing of Handwritten
Shortcuts as explained above.
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Macros: List of your handwritten shortcuts.
This version of ritePen comes with two helpful sample macros: dat inserts date and time into
your current document; home opens your browser and directs it to the main ritePen product page
(you can customize this shortcut or create a new one to jump to any website).
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Edit. Select a shortcut you wish to edit and press this button to open
editing panel.
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New. Click this button to add a new shortcut.
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Copy. Copies the description and body of the selected shortcut into a new shortcut, allowing easy assigning of multiple names to the same macro.
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Remove. Select a shortcut and press this button to remove it from the list.
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Context help line. Displays the description of the selected shortcut.
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OK/Cancel/Apply/Reset. Standard action buttons (pressing "Reset" undoes all
changes you've made after the Macro tab was opened).
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Edit Macro. This panel opens when you press the "New" button or the "Edit" button
when a shortcut is selected in the list.
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Shortcut type. Before entering the shortcut, use the radio buttons in the top
right side of the panel to choose between the "Text"
and the "Open/Execute" type of shortcuts. The first type enters text into
the target application and the second one opens documents, websites, and
applications.
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Name. Abbreviated name that you will be writing and encircling every time you invoke the
shortcut action.
Note: In this version of ritePen, abbreviated Name of pen macro should be in
English; you can use words in any language in the Text you wish to insert when
the handwritten shortcut is executed.
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Description. Brief memo.
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Text to insert (for the "Text" shortcut type). Multi-line text that will be placed
into the target text-aware application when you invoke the shortcut.
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Edit Macro (for "Open/Execute" shortcut type). This panel opens when you
press the "New" or the "Edit" button and choose the "Open/Execute" shortcut
type.
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File Name/URL/Executable to launch (for "Open/Execute" shortcut type).
Type in, paste or select full path to file (such as
c:\projects\mydocument.doc), full URL (for example, http://ritescript.com)
or application name (for example, winword.exe) that will be opened when
you run the shortcut.
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Parameters (for executables). Optional parameters to start the application
with.
Once you activate the always-on-top ritePen Toolbar, you can position it at any
location on your screen by dragging by the double bar on its top right side. It
will remember the position and will always appear there. Right-click anywhere on
the bar to open the ritePen's
menu.
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Pen On/Off
Clicking the Pen On/Off icon toggles between the Pen On mode and the Pen
Off mode exactly
as if you had clicked on the ritePen notification icon in the task bar.
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Open Punctuation Pane
Clicking the Add Punctuation Symbol icon launches the pane with punctuation
signs and special symbols exactly as if you had made the "Punctuation pane"
gesture.
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Settings...
Clicking the Settings icon calls up the ritePen Settings dialog box described in
the ritePen
Settings section above.
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ritePen includes a convenient online auto-upgrade system which notifies you
about new releases and upgrades. It is also used to offer instructional
materials, tips, surveys and other information. The auto-upgrade system
periodically connects to the ritePen auto-upgrade server and compares your
installed version with the latest available version of ritePen. The auto-upgrade
system does not capture or transfer any private info from your PC to the
server. If the installed version of ritePen requires an upgrade, you will
receive a pop-up notification with an upgrade offer and can instantly download
the upgrade from the Ritescript website or purchase it from our online store. If
you are not interested in the immediate upgrade, you may elect to be reminded
later or skip the offer of this particular upgrade altogether. If your company's
IT policies or personal preferences conflict with receiving the auto-upgrade
info, you can disable the check for auto-upgrades in the Settings>General as
explained above. You will still be able to check for upgrades manually from the
"About" box or the "Check for Upgrades" item in the Main Menu.
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info at ritescript dot com
www.ritescript.com
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ritePen, Ritescript and Evernote are registered trademarks of Evernote Corp. All
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