Smart Text Features

Smart Text Engine (STE)

The Smart Text Engine (STE) refers to the automatic modification of user-entered text to allow faster text input. When typing on a small keyboard, which is typical on a mobile device, a user is likely to make certain spelling mistakes. Furthermore, because text input for things like SMS, notes, and contact info is often done in a hurry, a user is likely to leave out punctuation and instead use capitalization or common slang abbreviations for words (e.g., "r" instead of "are," "u" instead of "you," etc.).

The STE has two features:

• Auto-Capitalization (STE-Autocap)

  The STE-autocap feature automatically enters a SHIFT key state during text entry when it detects a punctuation character followed by a space. The next character typed is then SHIFT-modified without the user's input.

• Auto-Replacement (STE-Autoreplace)

  The auto-replacement feature checks each typed word (where a word is a string of characters delimited by a space, punctuation, or end-of-field) against a file of replacement candidates. If the auto-replacement file has a match, the STE automatically replaces the word.

  The format of the replacement file is one word and replacement word per line, with each line CR+LF delimited.

  Example:

  r|are
  u|you
  
  

Controlling the STE

This section describes how to enable and disable the STE.

Enabling the STE

Both STE features are on by default in all of the text fields, except for the password fields.

Disabling the STE

There are several attribute tags that you can add to your app's text fields to disable some or all of the STE features:

x-palm-disable-ste-all = "true";        // disables ALL features of STE
x-palm-disable-auto-replace = "true";   // disables just STE-autoreplace
x-palm-disable-auto-cap = "true";       // disables just STE-autocap

As an alternative, set the text field's textReplacement attribute property to false before calling setupWidget().