textWriter
IRS textWriter is designed to format short amounts of text to help emerging readers - whether or not to blend letters together etc.
For example...
If we look at this sentence we can see that textWriter has highlighted several letters and groups of letters:
Th, ch, ck, ng
These groups of letters have been highlighted blue and underlined to help the reader learn that these letters make one sound. These groups are digraphs, a group of consonant letters standing for a single sound, when you say 'ch' (as in church) you do not pronounce the 'c' and the 'h' but they make one sound.
e, i
The vowels are highlighted in red.
sw
This group of letters are highlighted blue to help the reader learn that these letters should be blended together to make the sound. These groups are Clusters made of two or more consonant sounds, the sound they make are a blend of the two consonants. When you say 'sw' (as in swimming) you can hear both the 's' and the 'w' in the sound.
Controls
Open
This will open a TXT file on your computer. Please be aware that IRS textWriter is designed to work on small amounts of text; opening a large textfile will probably stop the program. Bad news.
Save
This will save a TXT file on your computer.
Copy
This will copy the contents of the window to the system clipboard as a picture. Use this when you want to copy and paste to another application.
PNG
This will save the contents of the window as a PNG file on your computer.
Help
Brings you here. Suprise!
Keyboard Shortcuts
Open = ctrl/command + o
Save = ctrl/command + s
Copy = ctrl/command + c
PNG = ctrl/command + e
Help = ctrl/command + ?
shift and - = a green glow to help make cloze procedures.
Highlighting
IRS textWriter will highlight letters and groups of letters using the following format as you type:
Initial Consonant Cluster
Consonant clusters, sometimes known as consonant blends are groups of two or three consonants that blend together to form a distinctive sound. The sound they make is a blend of the letters they contain.
spl , spr , sp , str , st , scr , sc , sm , sn , sl , sw , tw , cr , gr , fr , thr , bl , cl , gl , fl , pr , br , tr , dr , pl , squ , shr , sk , nd , nt , mp , rd , ld , lp , rk , lt , lf , pt , ft , ct
Clusters are made of two or more consonant sounds.
Vowels
Vowels, unlike consonants, can have more than one sound attached to it.
a, e, i, o, u
These vowel combinations are also included;
ay, oy
Consonant Digraph
Consonant digraphs groups of two or three letters that come together to make one sound - they are not blended.
chr , dge , tch , sh , ch , th , wh , ph , kn , wr , gh , ng , nk , ck , ff , ll , ss , zz , mb , Qu , qu , gn , Gn
A digraph is a group of consonant letters standing for a single sound.
About
Written by Ian Reed http://www.irsoftware.co.uk
IRS textwriter uses RichTextFX by Tomas Mikula https://github.com/TomasMikula/RichTextFX