Posted on 27 March 2007, at 1:54 pm, by Judie Lipsett
Q. Hi Judie,
Fantastic review of the Dopod 838 Pro. I’m quite thrilled with mine, since acquiring it in October 2006. I have one big challenge – and a couple smaller ones as well…
When composing text messages, the system dutifully / pedantically stores all word entries that you make (intentionally or otherwise) i.e. , if you type ‘Mary had a little lambbbb’ , and inadvertently hit the space bar as you’re blazing along on the keyboard before correcting the spelling of lamb, the system assumes that you intended to write ‘lambbbb’, and stores that “new” word, seemingly forever.
I have not been able to find out If the internal ‘dictionary” / word suggestion list can be edited by the user. I’d love to be able to refine the list with my own lexicon.
Is there software available that allows this?
Thanks for your time.
Konrad
A. Hi Konrad,
You might give the Word Completion Dictionary Editor a try, I think it will do exactly what you need…

According to its site:
PocketPC has internal mechanism intended to help user write text – word completion feature. You enable or disable it and change some its options in System > Settings > Input. But there is no way to add your word to dictionary or change words, that system learned from you (yes, it does it sometimes).
All words, system learns from you are placed in custom dictionary. This program is intended to edit
Two dictionaries may exist: main and temporary, dyncompdict.dat and dyncompdict.tmp. I can’t tell right now, why there are two of them and what each of them is intended for.
Each word in dictionary has weight – characteristic that defines word position in popup list. By default, weight = 0 assigned to each word. Maximal value, that you can specify is 50. Actually, you don’t need to change this, system will increase it automatically upon word usage. But sometimes it is useful to customize look of popup list.
Using this utility, you can create, edit and delete one of two dictionaries. Dictionary will be alphabetically sorted, when saved. Words shorter than 4 letters, will be discarded – system will ignore such words anyway. Duplicate words also will be discarded. This done to keep dictionary smaller – there is some limitation on its size – about 7-8kb, larger dictionary will be truncated. Later I will implement size limitation and some optimizations for that.
Now you can use clipboard freely. You can do cut/copy/paste with text in textbox and words in listview. You can copy any list of words, separated by spaces or newlines (e.g. “oneword twoword threeword”) and paste it directly into listview. If you want to add weight to some words, specify it separating by comma directly after word (e.g. “myword,3″). If you paste word, copied from listview somewhere outside this program, you may see its weight, appended at the end (if word had weight higher than 0) like “myword,3″.
No promises, but it looks like it might be the answer.
Does anyone else know of any other solutions?
Related posts:
March 29th, 2007 at 2:20 am
Hi Judie,
I’ve installed the software (Word Completion Dictionary Editor), + now (or so it seems) the machine won’t add ANY new words until / unless you make a manual input into the ‘Word Completion Dictionary Editor’
Seems the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction.
I didn’t mind having any / all “new” words (even the misspelled ones) added to the system automatically. That’s great. I just wanted to be able to edit that “new word” list periodically. My old company-issued Sony T630 does that
Now with this new software, nothing gets added until I stop everything + insert the new word into the dictionary. I’ve probably set someting up incorrectly, which is why I’m facing this challenge. I’ve tried to enter ‘unique’ words 3 or 4 times, but they were not added. In the “old” system, any ‘new’ word was added immediately..
How best do I proceed?
Thanks for your attention.
Konrad
March 29th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Well Konrad, I’m not sure what the problem is, but you might try writing to the developer at dmitriy.geels @ gmail.com. If anyone knows what’s up, it will be him. Sorry it created a new headache!
June 12th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
My Dopod 838 Pro’s backlight goes to ‘dim’ when the sliding keyboard is opened to it’s fullest extent – actually only goes dim within about 5% of being fully open. The tech folk here in Dubai (HTC / Nokia etc) have had a look, and determined that there is a small break in the ribbon cable that runs between the screen and the ‘body’ of the phone.
Lights up normally / adequately as long as keyboard is closed.
It’s well out of warranty, but I don’t mind paying to have it repaired.
Where do I get competent service for this phone? (Was bought in Singapore)
Thanks
Konrad
June 12th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
I can’t recommend http://www.pocketpctechs.com highly enough. I am not sure if Leonard and company do that particular job, but I bet they can – or they will point you to someone who can help.
December 21st, 2008 at 9:08 am
Is there freeware that will export my email from Incredimail to Outlook / Mozilla Thunderbird etc?
Konrad
March 24th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Dopod 838 Pro had a small icon in title bar that continuously displayed an “unread sms” icon as long as there was ……. one or more unread sms messages.
For 3-4 days now, with no conscious action on my part, all I get now is a temporary notification of new sms messages – the same icon, in the same location on the title bar but it’s only displayed for 2-3 seconds before disappearing. If I’m not watching the screen continuously, I won’t be alerted to new sms messages. If you go to the “desktop / homepage, then the Messaging line will continuously display eg “4 unread messages” as appropriate, but if If I happen to be on another page – Calendar, Contacts etc, there is no notification. I’ve looked thru all the menus and done a couple soft resets. Any ideas? Konrad