History of Dasher
Who’s Who
Dasher is brought to you by the Inference Group, led by David MacKay, Professor in the Department of Physics and cofounder of the information technology company Transversal.
David MacKay
Creator & Project Lead
Created the first Dasher prototype in 1997. Professor of Physics and cofounder of Transversal.
David Ward
Lead Developer (1998-2002)
Developed the research version of Dasher for his PhD, creating numerous enhancements and conducting experiments to quantify performance. Now works at Spiral Software, Cambridge.
Alan Blackwell
Research Advisor
Lecturer in the Computer Laboratory, helped design the experiments.
Iain Murray
Open Source Release (2002)
Prepared the Open Source software package for release. Started PhD in computational neuroscience at UCL in October 2002.
Phil Cowans
Developer & Project Manager
Created Dasher version 3 for GNU/Linux. Project manager from January 2006.
Hanna Wallach
Mobile Developer
Worked on version 3 for the iPAQ running Linux.
Matthew Garrett
Project Manager (2002-2003)
Funding from Gatsby Foundation supported his role as project manager and developer.
Chris Ball
Project Manager (2003-2005)
Took over as project manager and developer during this period.
Keith Vertanen
Speech-Dasher Developer (2003-2007)
Developed the Speech-Dasher prototype.
Piotr Zielinski
Developer (2005-2006)
Developed Ollie Williams's gaze-tracking, head-tracking, and gesture tracking software, and developer of two-dimensional Dasher.
Additional Contributors (Summer 2005)
- Tadashi Kaburagi - Asian language model for Dasher version 4
- Brian Williams - Game-mode for version 4
- Chris Hack - Automatic speed control for version 4
- Ingrid Jendrzejewski - Experiments on Button Dasher
- Frederik Eaton - Fixed cursor-display problem
Other Contributors
- Phil Hospedales - Contributions to eyetracking work
- Tim Hospedales - Contributions to eyetracking work
Versions of Dasher
Version 5.0 (2016-2024)
The update to version 5 was developed by Ada Majorek. Mac version updated September 2024 to work on recent versions of macOS (10.14 Mojave through macOS 14 Sonoma).
- Bug fixes and improvements
- Feature parity with v4 for Mac
- Modern macOS compatibility
Version 4.0 (October 2005)
Released for GNU/Linux and Windows.
- Supports any Unicode alphabet
- Asian language support
- Button modes
- Game mode
- Automatic speed control
Version 3.0
Released for GNU/Linux, Windows, and MacOSX.
- Supports any Unicode alphabet
- All major languages of the world supported
- Open source release
Version 2.0
For GNU/Linux and Windows desktops.
- English, upper and lower case
- Punctuation and numbers
Version 1.0 (C and Tcl)
For GNU/Linux and Windows desktops.
- Uses PPM as the language model
- Driven by mouse
- Several European languages and Japanese (Hiragana)
- English version supports capital and lower case
Pocket PC Version
Written by David Ward. Driven by stylus on touch-screen.
- Capital letters, numbers, punctuation
- English only
Eye-Dasher
Written by David Ward. Driven by mouse controlled by eye-tracker.
Daishoya (JDasher)
Japanese-language version of Dasher (Hiragana), included in the C and Tcl version.
Original Prototype (Tcl)
Written by David MacKay.
- Demonstrates relationship to arithmetic coding
- Includes crude bigram language model
- Runs on all platforms supporting Tcl
Project Timeline
David MacKay creates first Dasher prototype
David Ward develops research version for PhD
Open Source release; Iain Murray prepares package; Matthew Garrett joins as project manager
Phil Cowans creates version 3 for GNU/Linux; Hanna Wallach works on iPAQ version
Chris Ball serves as project manager; Keith Vertanen develops Speech-Dasher
Version 4.0 released with Unicode and Asian language support
Piotr Zielinski joins as developer; Phil Cowans becomes project manager
Version 5.0 released (developed by Ada Majorek)
Mac version 5 updated for modern macOS compatibility
Acknowledgments
The Dasher project is supported by the Gatsby Foundation and by the European Commission in the context of the AEGIS project (open Accessibility Everywhere: Groundwork, Infrastructure, Standards).
We’ve also got links to other groups working in the same field. A more detailed history of Dasher is available on request from David MacKay.