I'm in a program and the prediction window shows ZZZZZZzzzzz. What's that mean?
What is word prediction versus word completion?
Are grammatical rules important?
How good is Aurora's next word prediction?
What is multiple word prediction (phrase prediction)?
Can I choose different dictionaries in Aurora?
Why doesn't Aurora Prediction do word prefixes/suffixes?
Isn't a large vocabulary a detriment to word prediction?
What about subject area vocabularies?
How big a vocabulary can I build?
Can Aurora read the word choices in the Prediction Window?
How do I type numbers when Word Prediction is on?
Does Aurora do automatic capitalization and spacing after punctuation?
Can I change the appearance of the prediction window?
I can't spell, can I use word prediction?
What is phonetic spelling?
How does Aurora Prediction help me spell?
Does Aurora Prediction do abbreviation expansion?

I'm in a program and the prediction window shows ZZZZZZzzzzz. What's that mean?

The program you are trying to use is not one that comes preconfigured to work with Aurora Prediction. Open the window where you want word prediction to help. Click on the Prediction menu box in the top left corner of the prediction window. Click on "Activate Window" then click on Yes, then on the application where you want help. If the Zzzz message doesn't disappear immediately, click on the application where you want help again. The Zzzz message should disappear and a word list should appear.

In Aurora Suite 2005 for Windows you can have applications activated automatically just by typing in them if you have the Activate Prediction Automatically for New Applications checkbox checked on the Dictionary tab of the Prediction Options dialog.

What is word prediction versus word completion?

There are two elements required for what is usually considered a word prediction program. Some programs that call themselves word prediction programs only do one or the other. It is important to check that any program you are considering purchasing does both. Aurora Prediction does both word completion and prediction.

Word completion attempts to guess the rest of the letters in partially typed words in order to finish them for you. Word prediction attempts to guess what the next word will be once you complete a word based on what you have typed so far. The combination of these two abilities provides the maximum possible reduction in keystrokes using "word prediction" techniques.

Are grammatical rules important?

Grammatical rules are useful in word prediction if you require assistance with building sentences. If you are competent at sentence building, then grammatical rules more often than not are a hindrance since they will sometimes remove the grammatically correct word you are looking for from the prediction list because it doesn't fit with the grammatical rule set used by the prediction program. In general, we recommend you do not use grammatical rules because in a language as complicated as English, no set of rules can adequately describe the language and we have found our next word prediction algorithms to be more effective.

How good is Aurora's next word prediction

To give you an illustration of how effective Aurora's statistical analysis is: Aurora Prediction is trained on about 4 million characters in 12 english language novels. If you type in a word from one of those novels, you can follow long sections of the original novel text by typing 1 1 1 1... Even from the first novel we have it read for training. That means that if you have typed something before, or if Aurora prediction has seen what you are typing before, that there is a very good chance that prediction is going to be able to help you. The 97% next word prediction accuracy score in our recent tests wasn't 100% only because we don't predict punctuation characters and lost one point at the end of each sentence in our test.

What is multiple word prediction (phrase prediction)?

Multiple word prediction allows Aurora to learn not just single words, but phrases so that "Thank you very much" will appear in the prediction window rather than just "Thank" and then having to predict "you", "very" and "much" using at an absolute minimum of 3 extra keystrokes. And those phrases don't have to be preprogrammed, Aurora learns the phrases that you use as you use them. Aurora is proud to have pioneered this technology and to now see this innovation offered by so many other word prediction manufacturers.

Can I choose different dictionaries in Aurora?

Aurora Suite for Windows ships with three different dictionaries: a core dictionary of about 2000 words designed for beginning writers and people who prefer to build their own dictionaries, a spelling dictionary of around 100,000 words without any prediction statistics for spellchecking, and a prediction dictionary of around 150,000 words that is extensively trained for word prediction and including many compound words excluded from the spellchecking dictionary. Aurora Suite includes a number of international dictionaries as well as a 600,000 word English dictionary. We recommend you have at least 64M of RAM and set your dictionary cache to at least 8192K to use it. If you wish to create entirely new dictionaries starting with any of these base dictionaries, or an empty dictionary, you can do so.

Why doesn't Aurora Prediction do word prefixes/suffixes?

Although this is a checklist item for some people, with Aurora's large vocabulary, it is more or less irrelevent. Aurora can store all forms of each base word and uses its strong statistical analysis as well as grammatical rules to choose which forms of base words to offer the user. This lightens the cognitive load on the user, eliminating the need to construct words in a three step fashion. It also reduces errors caused by incomplete rule sets and the many exceptions in the English language as far as adding prefixes and suffixes to base words. Also, it makes it easier to develop foreign language editions since rules for suffixes and prefixes vary by language. Prefixes and suffixes were originally introduced in word prediction to overcome dictionary size limitations introduced by DOS. These limitations have long since been overcome in Aurora Systems products.

Isn't a large vocabulary a detriment to word prediction?

You would think that with so many words in the vocabulary, that you would have so many options, that you would have trouble finding the word you want. In fact, Aurora Prediction does a surprisingly good job of presenting the words you want when you want them. And since it learns as you use it, the more you use it, the better it gets at presenting the words you want.

What about subject area vocabularies?

Aurora Prediction doesn't directly support subject area vocabularies, although there are two options available: use multiple dictionaries for different applications and switch between them, or allow the built in statistical algorithms do the subject area shifts for you. Aurora Prediction is very good at giving you the right words when you need them. Once a dictionary has been used a bit, you will be surprised to see how well it works even when you switch subject areas, and you won't have to repeatedly train different dictionaries on the core words that you use. In Aurora Suite for Windows it is easy to create subject area vocabularies, just import your word processor documents into Aurora Prediction.

How big a vocabulary can I build?

We have successfully run a 600,000 word vocabulary with acceptable performance. Aurora Prediction's current limit for vocabulary size is about a million words.

Can Aurora Prediction read the word choices in the prediction window?

Yes, just press the ` key to the left of the 1 key on most keyboards. In Aurora Suite for Windows, in Prediction Options on the Window tab check the Read the Word under the Mouse Cursor checkbox to have Aurora read any word in the prediction window that you place the mouse cursor over.

How do I type numbers when Word Prediction is on?

Press 0 to disable word prediction for the window you are in, then type your number, then press ;0 (semicolon zero) to turn word prediction back on.

Does Aurora do automatic capitalization and spacing after punctuation?

Yes.

Can I change the appearance of the prediction window?

Aurora allows extensive customization of the appearance of the prediction window. The list can be either vertical or horizontal, sorted alphabetically, by statistical likelyhood or by length or the reverse of any of these, you can change the size of the font of the words, you can also set the minimum and maximum length of words to display in the window. You can also decide whether to display similarly sounding, differently spelled words in the window. The colors of the text and background in the Aurora Prediction window are controlled by Windows, so just change your Windows scheme and the Aurora prediction window will change to match all your other programs. In Aurora Suite for Windows you can also display word definitions, usage examples and homophones in the prediction window.

I can't spell, can I use word prediction? or

What is phonetic spelling?

Aurora has the unique ability to guess the word you are typing even if you have spelled it wrong. This is called phonetic spelling, and in many cases it allows you to spell like you hear, and still get the correctly spelled words in the prediction window. So if you type "ensyclopedia", you will see the correctly spelled word "encyclopedia" appear in the prediction window. To aid this recognition, similarly spelled words are color coded and appear in blue, where regular words are black.

How does Aurora Prediction help me spell?

If phonetic spelling above isn't enough help, Aurora prediction also provides automatic spelling correction for many commonly misspelled words, type "teh" and Aurora Prediction will change it to "the" without missing a beat. If you spell a word that Aurora Prediction doesn't know, it can either learn the word as a new word, mark the word to be checked later, or bring up a talking spellcheck dialog that allows you to correct the word or add the new word to the vocabulary right away.

Aurora's spellcheck feature is also designed to take into account the most common spelling errors (transposition, similarly sounding letters, confusing b, d, p, and q and so on), including those of dyslexics, to provide much more competent suggestions than commercial spellchecking packages aimed at average spellers. Also, unlike commercial spellchecking packages, it has the option to read the different suggestion choices aloud. In Aurora Suite it can also display definitions, homonyms and usage examples for many words.

Does Aurora Prediction do abbreviation expansion?

Aurora Prediction does both text abbreviations and spoken abbreviations. Abbreviations can be as long as you like, and expansions are limited to around a thousand characters. In Aurora Suite you can also play WAV files using macros.