Pass-Through Slides

Pass-Through Slides make it possible to call several applications that use such slides as their activation technique.

A Pass-Through Slide must start in one of the four rectangles outlined in black and must end either:

• In another one of the four rectangles, or
• In the application screen, or
• On FitalyStamp itself but not in the light-green areas.

Unlike normal slides, Pass-Through Slides are not handled by FitalyStamp and are passed through to the underlying Graffiti engine - just as if FitalyStamp were not there. A Pass-Through Slide acts as a slide between the silkscreen buttons shown next to each rectangle.

For example, to activate SwitchHack, a Pass-Through Slide from the South-West rectangle to the North-West rectangle will do. And of course, you can be reassured that all of this works with Bozidar Benc's PopUp Calculator and other popup applications!

Control Keys

The Palm OS has a Control state that has been so far only used by hardware keyboards. In this new version of FitalyStamp, you can set the Control state by sliding from the Command key to the Shortcut key:

Thereafter, the next character is understood as being in Control state. For example, MagicText uses Ctrl+m to present a list of plugins. So you can get it by a (short) slide from the Command key to the Shortcut key and a tap on m. Similarly, you can use this control slide to get other plugins that are linked to Ctrl+0 and others.

Although explained in terms of MagicText, this capability is very general and can be used by all sorts of applications. If no application is linked to a key, you will hear a bit (assuming the system sound is on) and the normal key will be issued.

New Options - New Menu Organization

The current information menu has been reorganized to allow new options. As you can see below, the advanced options submenu has been replaced by two separate submenus. Key options now covers all decisions concerning keys, and everything on sliding is now in Sliding options:

Separate Options for Half Cells

As you can see on Sliding Options, there are now two separate options for half cells. So, for example, it is now possible to set half-cells for digits (and thereby for punctuation also) while keeping full cells and sliding for accents and arrows.

Option for a Permanent Toggle

It is now possible to decide whether the Keyboard Toggle is Automatic or Permanent. Automatic - the existing behavior in FitalyStamp 1.0 - means that FitalyStamps automatically reawakes upon launching another application. Permanent means that FitalyStamp stays toggled off until you tap again on the Keyboard Toggle.

This ability to have a Permanent Toggle has been asked by several users who want to use Graffiti in the dark.

Selection of Accent Slides

The new Select Slides dialog allows you to select which accent slides you want to enable. If a given accent slide is checked, accented letters are produced for that direction by short slides and capitals by longer slides. If it is unchecked, capitals are produced for all slides, regardless of their length.

In the example on the right, all slides are enabled. In the one on the left, only the left slide is enabled. The left direction is used for characters such as å, ø, æ, œ, and also for customized left slides as will now be explained.

Customized Left Slides

Last but not least is Bozidar Benc's new dialog to customize left slides, which offers a major capability for extending and redefining the action of FitalyStamp:

To find out the current effect of sliding to the left for a given key, tap on that key on the Fitaly diagram of the dialog. The a and A buttons show definitions for lowercase and uppercase letters. Here we see the default left slide definitions: å for a, and Œ for E.

Then you can use FitalyStamp itself to enter a different definition for left sliding. Below, we assign @ for a left slide of a and the club suit for c. The 123 popup and the letter popup are conveniently placed under the dialog:

The new definition can be one or more characters - up to 25 characters:

The first two examples show what a German user might want to use, reflecting the fact that these letter combinations are frequent in German, by defining "sch" for "s" and "Sch" for "S." The last example shows that this can also be used in the same way as shortcuts.

Finally, to recover the default definition, you just delete the current definition.

Downloading Version 2.0 - Release 2.05

To download FitalyStamp Version 2.0, click on the link below:

	FitalyStamp205.zip
	The contents have been compressed into a zip archive, which you will need to decompress (unzip) before you install the application on your Palm Organizer.

The archive includes the following prc files:

• FitalyStampApp.prc
  a stand-alone application
• FitalyStampHack.prc
  a system extension managed by HackMaster.

If you are using HackMaster to manage system extensions, you should install FitalyStampHack. Similarly, install the Hack form if you are using some HackMaster-compatible extension manager such as X-Master. Otherwise, install the stand-alone application FitalyStampApp.

Notes on Upgrading

If you are installing this version over a previous version of FitalyStamp, you must first uninstall the prior version. (See the next section.)

Note that for upgrading, you are going to delete FitalyStamp but not the companion program FS Status, which handles registration information. So when you install the new FitalyStamp software, it will find out from FS Status that it is already registered.

Un-Installing FitalyStamp

To uninstall FitalyStamp, perform the following two steps:

• Disable FitalyStamp
  from the FitalyStamp application icon or from HackMaster. This first step is essential since going to the second step (deleting) without first disabling can leave the Palm organizer in an unstable state.

  If you are in doubt, another way of making sure that FitalyStamp is disabled is to do a soft reset (the simple reset that is performed with a paper-clip or with a pen on the back of the Palm organizer).

• Delete FitalyStamp
  in the same way as you delete any other Palm application. (See the section "Installing and Removing applications" in the Handbook for the Palm Organizer.)

What's Next...

FitalyStamp version 2.0 is being released with "zero known problems." In addition, we are very pleased to be now able to use the same executable on color and black & white devices.

Release 2.05 of FitalyStamp version 2.0 includes an adaptation to the changes made by Palm OS 4.0 for the treatment of accented characters on the m500 and the m505.

Thanks again for your comments and suggestions which have helped us define a much improved FitalyStamp: This version incorporates most of the suggestions that have been discussed on the Fitaly forum for the past year. And if you have an idea for what version 3.0 should include, let's discuss it on the forum.