PDA software potentials

[David Lewis]

Klahowya,
Just last week I had a birthday and received a PDA, a Toshiba Pocket PC, as
my present. Some of the software for this mini computer is called Letter
Recognizer and Block Recognizer. These are a few of the ways that the folks
at Microsoft figured out to help PDA users to write on their devices since
they have no easy to use keyboard installed. You can get a keyboard and I
have, but most people probably do not go this route. I was reading the
manual and the Letter recognizer software is designed to learn as you
write. So its meant to learn to recognize new words that each person
habitually writes. I remembered this fact this morning when playing with
this new toy-(er)-computer device. and then I though about using native
languages on this device... I began typing in the names of tribes in
oregon. most do not appear in any computer spelling dictionary. names like
siuslaw, kalapuya, santiam... but after writign a native word once, the
device recognized the word the next time I wrote it.

So what about the application of this software for native language
programs? do people who are actively engaged in langauge survival programs
think this sort of software can potentially be useful? I wonder if somehow
the software can be liberated from the PDA/Pocket PC format and used on
regular computers? Are there examples of this software already in use in a
PC or Mac format?

Just an idea,
David