Enhancement of soft keyboard operations using trigram prediction

Abstract

The most likely to be used characters and controls of a soft keyboard are determined from consulting trigram tables, and enhanced and/or positioned to attract the user and to facilitate quick recognition and selection. The letters and other characters of the soft keyboard display can be arranged in a standard keyboard format, some variation of that format such as a Dvorak layout or an entirely different arrangement such as strings of letters and numbers in alphabetical and numerical order. However, regardless of the layout, an attractant, such as color intensity, or size, is used for emphasis to make a soft keyboard user cognizant of the location of the subset of characters that the user is most likely to select to standout from the other keys of the keyboard. In addition to enhancing all characters of the subset, particular emphasis can be placed on the most likely character in the subset to be selected. Where the most likely character is a letter, duplicates of other letters of the subset, symbols identifying control functions for selection, and probable multiletter combinations, including full words and word endings, can be clustered around that most likely to be selected letter to facilitate quick selection.