# -*- mode: org -*-


* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DUPIU2tj7dBI][Video: Talking Phonebook: Eyes-Free Communication Device]]

Pressing the _menu_ button while in the /Talking Dialer/ toggles
between _dialing mode_ and _phonebook_.
When in _phonebook_, you get eyes-free access to your contacts
with the ability to quickly move to the  contact  that you wish
to call.

When in the  _phonebook_, you can 
scroll through your contacts  and press the _call_ button to call
the /current/ contact.  In addition, you can use /stroke dialing/
as explained below to quickly move to a specific contact.

** Entering Letters Using Stroke dialing 

We covered eyes-free input with the touch screen in the [[./02-strokes.html][earlier
video on stroke dialing]]
--- in that video, we illustrated the concept via a traditional
phone keypad. Here, we  extend that technique
to enable   textual input. 
In the explanation below, we will use compass directions  to help
with orientation.
As before, we will use relative positioning i.e., for the rest of
this explanation, you can start /anywhere/ on the touch-screen
--- though we recommend (for reasons that  will become  evident)
that you start somewhere close to the middle of the screen.

** The Eight Compass Directions

Defining the /center/ as where you first touch down on the
screen, notice that  you can stroke in any one of the _8_ compass
directions, and that  opposite pairs of compass directions e.g.,
North and South, can be thought of as /opposites/.
So we get _4_ pairs. We enumerate these below,
associate them with the _4_ Google colors,  and  equate them
to their equivalent strokes from the /stroke dialer/:


  - Red: North-West and South-east _1_ and _9_.
  - Blue: North and South  --- _2_ and _8_.
  - Green: North-East and South-West --- _3_ and _7_.
  - Yellow: East and West --- _4_ and _6_.

Now, let's place the letters of the alphabet on these _4_ circles
as follows:

  - Red: _A_ ... _H_
  - Blue: _I_ ... _P_
  - Green: _Q_ ... _X_
  - Yellow: _Y_ ... _Z_.

To input a given letter, we /stroke/ to the circle containing the
desired letter, trace along the circle till we hear the letter we
want, and lift up the finger to make the selection. Letters are
spoken in a female voice while moving along the selected circle;
lifting up the finger speaks the selected letter in a male voice.

Notice that conceptually, we have defined a fairly simple mapping
from strokes to letters of the alphabet!
** Skimming  The Contact List

So to cut a long story short, you /dont need to/ scroll through
the contact list. To quickly jump to a contact, use the technique
described above to input the first letter from the contact's name
--- the aplication jumps to contacts starting with that
letter. At that point, you can either scroll, or enter additional
letters to further filter the contact list.


** Examples Of Using Strokes For Letters


Notice from the mapping shown earlier that we can /enter/ each
circle either at the _top_ or _bottom_. Thus, entering the red
circle at the _top_ gets to _A_, while entering it at the
_bottom_ gets us to _E_. This means that the _8_ letters on any
given circle are no more than _3_ steps away --- for example, to
enter _C_, one needs to trace clockwise from _A_, or
counter-clockwise from _E_. As an example, _H_ is only _1_ step
from _A_ on the red circle. similarly, _P_ is only _1_ step from
_I_ on the blue circle.

#+TITLE: Video: Talking Phonebook: Eyes-Free Communication Device
#+AUTHOR: T.V Raman
#+EMAIL: raman@google.com
#+DATE: 2009-03-30 Mon
#+LANGUAGE: en
#+OPTIONS: H:3 num:t toc:nil \n:nil @:t ::t |:t ^:t -:t f:t *:t
#TeX:t LaTeX:nil skip:nil d:nil tags:not-in-toc +LINK_UP:
#http://eyes-free.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/documentation/videos/index.html
#+LINK_HOME: http://eyes-free.googlecode.com/