Typing and the keyboard

The full-screen keyboard opens whenever CAT needs text: messages, names, addresses, Wi-Fi passwords and hub settings.

The layout#

The title bar shows what you are typing (for example To Mono or WiFi password), a counter such as 26/159 that turns red when full, and an X to cancel. Below are two lines of text and four rows of keys. The bottom row holds the page key, comma, space, full stop and the accept key, whose label says what accepting does: SEND, SAVE, NEXT or DONE.

Controls#

Autocorrect#

When you finish a word (with a space, punctuation or accept), CAT checks it against a dictionary of about 20,000 words. A word it doesn't know is replaced with the closest match, preferring slips to neighbouring keys and common words. The corrected word gets a thin red underline, and the title shows was: teh with what you typed.

• Undo a correction: delete the corrected word and type your original again. CAT keeps it and learns it, so it won't correct that word again.
• Left alone: words with digits, anything after @, # or /, acronyms in capitals, and words longer than 16 letters.
• A capital first letter is kept.
• When you press SEND or SAVE, only a clear single-slip mistake in the last word is fixed.
• Autocorrect is off for addresses, names, Wi-Fi details and hub settings.

Learned words#

Settings → SETTINGS → KEYBOARD shows how many words CAT has learned and lists the first few. FORGET LEARNED WORDS asks Forget N learned word(s)? and clears them. CAT remembers up to 48 words.

Typing on a USB keyboard#

You can plug a USB keyboard into the USB-C port (see USB keyboard and mouse). While the on-screen keyboard is open, letters, digits and punctuation type directly (Shift works), Backspace deletes, Enter accepts and Esc cancels. Keys repeat after 400 ms. Elsewhere, the keyboard stands in for the buttons: