Virtual Keyboard System with Automatic Correction

A text entry system comprising:

• a user input device comprising a touch sensitive surface including an auto-correcting keyboard region comprising a plurality of the characters of an alphabet, wherein each of the plurality of characters corresponds to a location with known coordinates in the auto-correcting keyboard region, wherein each time a user contacts the user input device within the auto-correcting keyboard region, a location associated with the user contact is determined and the determined contact location is added to a current input sequence of contact locations;
• a nontransitory memory containing a plurality of objects, wherein each object is a string of one or a plurality of characters forming a word or a part of a word, wherein each object is further associated with a frequency of use;
• an output device with a text display area;
• and
• a processor coupled to the user input device, memory, and output device, said processor comprising:
• a distance value calculation component which, for each determined contact location in the input sequence of contacts, calculates a set of distance values between the contact locations and the known coordinate locations corresponding to one or a plurality of characters within the auto-correcting keyboard region;
• a word evaluation component which, for each generated input sequence, identifies one or a plurality of candidate objects in memory, and for each of the one or a plurality of identified candidate objects, evaluates each identified candidate object by calculating a matching metric based on the calculated distance values and the frequency of use associated with the object, and ranks the evaluated candidate objects based on the calculated matching metric values;
• a word choice list component configured to display a word choice list on said output device, said word choice list comprising a list of an exact typing object composed of said determined corresponding characters in the order corresponding to the input sequence of contact locations and one or a plurality of candidate objects according to their evaluated ranking.