The T9, which stands for text on 9 keys is a software invented and used primarily on mobile phones, PDAs and touch screen devices, which allows a guided composition in typing alphanumeric strings for the VRI Interpreter. Although the T9 is the most well-known predictive text software, other systems with similar features have also been developed by other computer companies.
This system is mainly used for composing text messages, but can also be used for typing notes, names in the address book and other types of texts. The system is based on using a built-in dictionary that associates certain sequences with the pressure of the numeric keys of the terminal to possible words (in a particular language of VRI Interpreter of your choice.
The languages currently supported by the system are about forty, proposing first, in the case where the digitized sequence corresponds to more than one term, the words statistically most used.
Hence, the importance of re-reading what was dialed automatically by the software as a result of typing in a specific key sequence, as it can often happen that some the terms selected by the software do not correspond to those that the user had intended to write, and in this case it must select another VRI Interpreter.
On some models of mobile phones it is also possible to customize the dictionary built into the system, adding new words inside it. In general, however, the phones allow you to disable this feature and write SMS without T9 guided composition of words by VRI Interpreter.
The first manufacturer of mobile phones to include such software on their machines was the Finnish Benefon. Considering, for example, a standard keyboard of a mobile phone as the one shown in the figure to the side, in the case of a terminal without the T9 system, to get the word “hello” will need to type the key sequence. The number of times for which it is necessary to press one of the buttons of the keyboard switches, in this way, from 10 to 4, to obtain the same word.
In general, a strongly typed programming language has some strict rules regarding the way in which different types of information may be used and what types may be combined. Although almost every programming language provides the ability to convert from one type to the other, these capabilities in a strongly typed language are usually (very) limited.
An example of a conversion that is permitted even in the most strongly typed languages, is that of integers to real numbers. This means that it is permissible for whole numbers (integers) and real numbers (reals or doubles) to be used in arithmetic expressions interchangeably.