Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.

I have to say that I came to review Allegro with a few preconceptions. With some of the less-then-glowing press reports and coverage in the on-line world and with a healthy dose of scepticism about HWR (Hand Writing Recognition), I was prepared for a utility that I was going to hate.

In fact, Purple Software's Allegro earnt itself a healthy degree of respect. I agree with the review pundits who rightly claim that Allegro's no substitute for text entry on the already excellent Series 5 keyboard. But that's not the point. I've been in two situations in the last week where it was so dark that I couldn't see the keyboard. And in each case, the mocking glow of the backlit screen seemed to say "Wouldn't Allegro have been handy right now?". Having installed it, I'd say that it definitely would. The program also has several other handy features which actually enhance Series 5 operation, but more of that later.

Allegro's bread and butter is allowing keyboard-less text entry on the Series 5 using Papyrus'a HWR 'engine'. The recognition process works very well indeed, with much more natural stroke shapes than the PalmPilot's Graffiti. Mastering the basic alphabet took only a few minutes, after which the accuracy of recognising a stream of my rather scrawly handwritten letters was up to over 90%. Not a patch on the keyboard, but very handy in the pitch dark, with incorrect characters being erased by a backwards swipe of the pen. This whole sentence was written using Allegro, with only one mistake. Writing speed is about one character per second at best, which I guess translates to about 8 words a minute.

It's all very clever technology, with the Allegro window being resizeable, moveable and rotatable anywhere ontop of the foreground application, with the HWR even working inside dialogs in OPL programs.

The range of pen strokes supported by the system includes all the most esoteric symbols, though some of the shapes required aren't that memorable. The provision of control and macro shapes give a clue to the extra features I mentioned earlier. Macros can be set up to insert text, information or objects (such as a signature in Sketch) at a couple of strokes of the pen. Even menu options can be automated and although utilities like Macro5 will do this for free it's still nice to have the functionality all built into the one system.

A special clipbook allows multiple items to be stored for re-use; perhaps standard icons or paragraphs of text. In conjunction with the macro fcaility, the clipbook turns Allegro into one very useful utility.

My only quibbles are is its high price (£50) and the unavoidable fact that by necessity it involves intensive use of the touch-screen (and hence increases the possibility of scratches). But those apart it's an intriguing piece of software. Allegro will surely come into its own on the keyboardless EPOC/32 machines of the future, but it may even now find a small niche on the Series 5s of today.

See also the freeware Nightkeys and the commercial Calligrapher.

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