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The virtual keyboard is accessed by changing the input method as we did for the handwriting recognition options. Instead of choosing one of the handwriting options from the pop-up menu, you choose Keyboard. This will turn the soft input panel at the bottom of your screen into a standard QWERTY keyboard, You can tap any key in the keyboard, just as you would with a real keyboard, to have that character inserted where the cursor is. The 123 key at the top left of the keyboard will bring up a numerical keypad along with some special character keys, as shown in the next illustration. Tapping 123 again will return you to the regular keyboard. Tapping the button on the lower left with the two accented characters will open a keyboard of special foreign characters, as shown next. Tapping this key again will return you to the regular keyboard.
The arrow keys on the bottom right will move the cursor in the direction indicated by the arrow.

At any point you can tap the ? icon on the toolbar to go to the help area and learn more about the options on the toolbar. Tapping the OK button will close the correction window, returning you to the document with your modifications in place. Tapping the X button will close the window without making your modifications to the document.
In the correction window, you can correct erroneous words and add words to Transcriber’s dictionary. Transcriber has a built-in calculator that will solve simple equations simply by writing them on the screen. For example, if you need to know the answer to 4 × 3, simply write 4 × 3 = on the screen, leaving the answer blank. Transcriber will fill in the answer in the results that it transcribes into the application, as shown here:

If a word has been entered poorly or was recognized incorrectly by Transcriber, you can go to the Transcriber correction window to fix the problem. First, select the word that was incorrectly recognized (the fastest way is to double-tap it). Then open the correction window by drawing the Correction gesture, as shown previously; by drawing the Quick Correct gesture and then selecting Go To Corrector from the menu; or by tapping the correction icon on the Transcriber toolbar (which appears as a red check mark over a page of writing).The correction window will display a larger version of the word that you selected. You can correct an incorrect word by inputting directly over the letter or letters to change them. Alternatively, you can select an entire word and tap the alternates icon (appears as an uppercase A with a bar underneath it) in the new toolbar that is at the top of the screen.
The Alternates menu that pops up when you double-tap the word is shown in the following illustration. In this menu you can select a replacement for the wrong word from a list of dictionary words, add this word to the dictionary, change the case of the selected letter, add a space, or cancel to close the menu.The fourth icon from the left on the top toolbar allows you to switch the correction window from full-screen mode to partial screen. In partial screen you can still see your whole document while the correction window floats in the front.

Selecting text that you have already written is a bit tricky with Transcriber. When you move the stylus on the screen to select a letter or word, Transcriber will assume that you are now entering a word and begin drawing a line. You can select text three ways. In the first method, you tap and hold the desired text until the text is selected (usually about two seconds). The text will appear highlighted to show that it is selected. The tap and hold method doesn’t work very well if the application you are in has a tap and hold shortcut menu. For example, in Notes, if you tap and hold a word, a shortcut menu appears in which you are given options to insert a date, paste, or look for alternate words. The second method to select text is to tap your stylus to the left of the text and drag it (drawing a line) across all the text that you want to select. Then, without lifting the stylus from the screen, hold the stylus in place at the end of the selection.
The third method for selecting text is to suspend Transcriber temporarily by tapping the hand icon in the bottom right of the screen. The box and white background around the hand will disappear.This means you can now use the stylus to interact with the screen without Transcriber. To return to Transcriber, simply tap the hand icon again. Suspending Transcriber enables you to drag and drop, select, and carry out other stylus activity that can be difficult with Transcriber active.

The way that Transcriber recognizes your handwriting can be adapted to your unique way of forming letters. For example, if you find that Transcriber regularly misinterprets a particular letter, you can train it using the Letter Shapes Selector. You open the Letter Shapes Selector by tapping the icon in the toolbar that looks like a cursive letter a (fourth icon from the left). The Block Recognizer allows you to use Palm Graffiti to enter text into your iPAQ.

The Letter Shapes Selector window gives you all the characters of the alphabet as well as the most commonly used punctuation and special characters at the bottom of the screen. To select the character you want to train, tap it in the list (the arrows at the bottom right will move you to the next or previous character). In the top portion of the screen, you will see a series of characters displaying the different Transcriber allows you to write words anywhere on the screen and have them translated into text. The Letter Shapes Selector allows you to train Transcriber to recognize the way that you write letters. ways that Transcriber will expect to see the upper- and lowercase versions of the letter. You can select each variation and tag it as being one that is often, rarely, or never used by you. Any letter you select as rarely used will appear with one slash through the letter, and any that you mark as never used will appear with an x marked through the letter. Doing this serves two purposes: By eliminating letters that you never write, Transcriber has fewer letters to search through each time to find a match and can thus recognize text more quickly.

The second purpose is that letters that look similar to other characters can be difficult to interpret. For example, a cursive Q looks very much like the number 2. If you never use the cursive Q style, then you can increase the chances of the number 2 being correctly interpreted.While in the Letter Shapes Selector, you can see a demo of how any of the shapes is drawn by tapping it. This will cause it to draw itself for your observation. If you are concerned that by tweaking your Transcriber letter shape settings, you might make your iPAQ unusable for someone that you share the device with, you don’t need to worry. The Letter Shapes Selector also allows you to set one of two profiles: Master or Guest. By default, it assumes you are editing the Master profile; however, if you lend your iPAQ to someone, you can set it to the Guest profile, so they can use standard recognition or customize the settings for their own handwriting without affecting your settings. You can select the profile in the File menu, as shown in the illustration that follows. If many people are using the same iPAQ, you can save and load profiles from this menu as well. At any point, you can revert to the default setting by selecting Use Original Settings from this menu.

Transcriber is our favorite way of entering text into the iPAQ, particularly when writing e-mail messages or documents. Transcriber allows you to write anywhere on the screen and then, when you pause, have your written text interpreted into words and phrases. You can print, use cursive writing, or mix it up, and Transcriber can still interpret what you are doing. When using Transcriber, don’t write too small. The larger your text, the easier it is to interpret. On the other extreme, don’t write so large that you can’t fit your text on the screen. Also, remember that you can write anywhere, so use the full screen. Don’t worry about writing over whatever is currently displayed; what is shown on the screen will not affect your Transcriber input. Try not to rest your palm on, or allow anything else to come into contact with, the screen.
Another advantage to Transcriber is that it works with any Pocket PC application, but doesn’t take up screen space, giving you the maximum view of your application.

The Block Recognizer is similar to the Letter Recognizer in that you write letters on the SIP one character at a time. This method, however, uses the Graffiti language that is standard with Palm hand-held devices. If you are migrating to your iPAQ from a Palm, this option makes it easy to use the same input method that you are used to on the Palm. The SIP is divided into two entry sections. The left section is for letters (both upper- and lowercase). The right section is set up for numerical entry, the keys on the right side of the SIP do the same as they do in the Letter Recognizer. If at any time you need help figuring out what strokes to use to make a character, tap the ? button on the right.
It will enable you to launch a Demo that will show you how to draw any strokes you require.

The Letter Recognizer uses the area at the bottom of the screen called the soft input panel (SIP).
This area is divided into three sections where you will draw your characters. The left third of the SIP is reserved for drawing uppercase characters. The middle section is for lowercase letters, and the right third is for numbers. The far right of the SIP contains buttons for Backspace, Cursor Left, Cursor Right, Return, Space, Help, and Special Characters.
The Letter Recognizer will interpret any characters that you write in the SIP area and put the translated characters into the currently running program wherever the cursor is, just as if you were typing on a keyboard. The dashed line through the middle of the SIP is used to ensure letters can be correctly interpreted. For example, because the uppercase and lowercase forms of some letters look the same when handwritten, to write a lowercase o or c, you should write them below the dashed line Characters with parts that descend below the normal printed line are called descenders. Letters such as lowercase p and q are examples. You should draw them below the dashed line, with the descending part extending below the solid line, Similarly, letters with parts that extend above the dashed line, like b and d, are called ascenders. These should be drawn with the body below the dashed line and the ascender above the line Punctuation can also be entered anywhere in the SIP Letter Recognizer, but it seems to be more effective to use the Special Characters button on the right of the SIP. This button shows three symbols as its icon: @, *, and $. When you tap this button, the SIP changes to show a number of special characters, as shown in the next illustration. You can select the character you want to insert by tapping it with the stylus. As soon as you have selected your character, the panel returns to normal Letter Recognizer mode.
The odd thing that you will need to get used to is that when you are using the Letter Recognizer, you always enter letters as lowercase, even if you want an uppercase letter. To get an uppercase A, you enter a lowercase a in the leftmost section of the SIP. This is counterintuitive and can make the Letter Recognizer a little difficult for new users. It is not our preferred method of input. You can configure some settings to change the way Letter Recognizer behaves and tweak them for your own uses. These settings can be accessed by tapping Options in the input method pop-up menu. (To open this menu, tap the up arrow in the lower-right corner.) The first option is Quick Stroke. Turning this on allows you to write letters with a single stroke of the stylus. This is different from the Graffiti language that is used on the Palm and requires you to learn new ways of writing letters.
The second option is Right To Left Crossbar. You will turn this option on if you are in the habit of putting the horizontal line in letters like t and f from right to left instead of left to right. The third option is Allow Accented Characters. This will allow you to enter characters that use accents such as è (e with a grave accent) in French.

The most common way of entering data into a hand-held device is to use the stylus to write characters that are interpreted into text. Pocket PC 2002 and Pocket PC 2003, which is loaded on all current models of iPAQs, come loaded with three handwriting-recognition modes for text entry: Letter Recognizer, Block Recognizer, and Transcriber. Only one method of character recognition can be used at a time. The icon at the bottom-right corner of the screen indicates the current method of recognition that you are using. Tapping on the up arrow beside the icon will open a pop-up menu you can use to change your input method.

Both the Start and New menus can be modified to meet your specific needs. Select Settings from the Start menu, and a window will open that displays the icons of different settings that you can modify.
Tapping the Menu icon will open a dialog box where you can customize the Start and New menus. The Start Menu tab of the Menus dialog box is focused on the Start menu. You will see a list of all known applications and subfolders on the Pocket PC that you can include on the menu. Adding a folder means that tapping it on the Start menu will open it. Modifying the menu is simply a matter of selecting the check boxes of the applications and folders you wish to appear in the Start menu, and deselecting the check boxes of those that you don’t want. The New Menu tab in the Menus dialog box controls the New menu. You cannot add new items to this list, but you can remove documents that you do not want to be able to launch directly, by deselecting those documents in the list. The more important option on this tab is Turn On New Button Menu. When this check box is selected, the New menu will show a pop-up arrow beside it. This doesn’t affect how the menu works in the Today page, but in other applications with a New menu, normally New will only create a new document within that application. With the pop-up menu, you can create a new document of any type from almost anywhere at any time. For example, while editing a Word document, you could open the New menu and begin creating a new e-mail message or Excel workbook.