Quill Inkwell 1.0 Release Notes

Version 1.0.0 (build 2). This is Quill Inkwell’s first public release.

Quill Inkwell expands abbreviations in every Windows program. Type a short word, press space, and Inkwell types what you saved in its place: a phrase, an email address, a signature, a paragraph, or a template with the cursor already where you need it.

It is for anyone who types the same things again and again, and it was built for screen reader users from the start. It is part of the QUILL family, and it is free. Its abbreviations are the same ones QUILL’s editor expands: there is one list, shared by both.

The short version

Inkwell runs quietly in the notification area. Type an abbreviation in your browser, your email or a form, then a space or a punctuation mark, and it expands. Press Backspace straight away if you did not want it. Nothing you type is kept, and nothing is sent anywhere.

What you can do with it

Expand abbreviations anywhere you type

Inkwell works in browsers, email, chat, forms, office programs, code editors, terminals and dialog boxes. An abbreviation can be anything you can type without a space, such as addr, sig or ;;date. The space or punctuation you typed stays where it is, so btw. keeps its full stop.

A few common ones, such as btw, imo and asap, are built in, so there is something to try straight away.

One list with QUILL

Inkwell and QUILL read and write the same abbreviations. Add one in QUILL’s Abbreviation Manager and it works everywhere in Windows within moments. Add one in Inkwell and QUILL’s editor knows it. Neither program needs restarting. Inside QUILL’s own editor, QUILL does the expanding itself and Inkwell stays out of the way, so a word is never expanded twice.

Manage your list

Abbreviations > Manage Abbreviations… (Ctrl+M) lists everything. Search it, filter it by category, and add, edit, turn on, turn off or delete entries. The search finds words in any order. A list of ten thousand abbreviations opens and searches as quickly as a list of ten.

Abbreviations > New from Clipboard… (Ctrl+Shift+N) is the fast way to add one. Copy some text anywhere, press Ctrl+Shift+N, and the text is already filled in. You only choose the abbreviation.

Import… and Export… in the manager save and load your whole list, with every setting.

Settings for each abbreviation

Each abbreviation decides for itself:

• whether it is on;
• whether only the exact spelling matches;
• its category;
• what expands it: a space or punctuation, a space only, punctuation only, or never;
• what is spoken when it expands: nothing, the abbreviation, or the text;
• whether it plays a sound;
• whether to add a space after the punctuation that expanded it.

For an abbreviation that is not case sensitive, your typing sets the case. btw expands as you wrote it, Btw capitalises each word, and BTW puts it all in capitals.

Dates, the clipboard, and the cursor

An expansion can hold the date, the time, the day, the month, the year, your Windows user name, or what is on the clipboard right now. ${cursor} puts the cursor at that spot after the text is typed. The user guide lists every one.

Expansions that ask you something

Put a field in an expansion, such as ${field:Name}, and Inkwell asks for it before typing. A small form has one labelled box per field. A name used twice is asked once and filled in both places. Escape cancels, and cancelling leaves your abbreviation exactly as you typed it.

Quick Insert

Abbreviations > Quick Insert… (Ctrl+K) opens a list of every abbreviation you have turned on, with the ones you use most at the top. Type a few letters, arrow to the one you want, and press Enter. The text is typed into the program you were working in. Quick Insert is the only way to reach an abbreviation set never to expand on its own. In Inkwell’s window, the Quick Insert… button is Alt+I.

Expand on demand, and take one back

Abbreviations > Expand the Word I Just Typed (Ctrl+Alt+E) expands the word before the cursor without waiting for a space. It works in the middle of a word, at the end of a line, and for abbreviations set never to expand by themselves.

If an abbreviation expands when you did not want it, press Backspace straight away. Inkwell puts your abbreviation back. This works for a few seconds, and only in the window where it expanded.

Keys that work from any program

You can choose up to four keys that work in every program: one to show or hide Inkwell’s window, one for Quick Insert, one to expand the word you just typed, and one to start and stop Dictate Anywhere. None of them exists until you choose it, because a key like that is taken away from every other program. In the File menu:

• Show and Hide Key… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H)
• Quick Insert Key… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K)
• Expand Word Key… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E)
• Dictate Anywhere Key… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D)

Type the key you want and press Enter. Inkwell says the key back. If another QuillVille app or another program already uses it, Inkwell says so and your old choice stays.

Dictate Anywhere

Dictate Anywhere lets you talk instead of type, in any program. Choose its key first, then put the cursor where the words should go, press your key and speak. Each phrase is typed when you pause. Press the key again, or say “stop dictation”, to stop. In Inkwell’s window, Dictation > Dictate Anywhere (Ctrl+D) does the same.

It uses the same words you taught QUILL in My Words and Phrases, and the same voice commands as QUILL and QUILL Lite. Say “scratch that” to erase the phrase just typed. Say QUILL before a command, as in “QUILL scratch that”, and it is never typed. You can spell an address across pauses, insert snippets, abbreviations and clips by voice, and correct the words dictation typed, with commands such as “correct that” and “replace Tuesday with Wednesday”.

If the focus moves while you dictate, Inkwell pauses and holds your words instead of typing them in the wrong place. Then choose Dictation > Resume (Ctrl+R), Resume in This Field (Ctrl+Shift+R) or Discard Held Words (Ctrl+Shift+D).

Change engines and other choices in Dictation > Dictation Settings… (Ctrl+Alt+D), the same window QUILL uses. Your dictation settings can be shared with QUILL, QUILL Lite and QUILL Transcribe.

When QUILL Transcribe is running, pressing your Dictate Anywhere key passes the work to it. Only one of the two dictates at a time.

Everything else

• Options > Preferences… (Ctrl+,) has App Sounds Play On…, to choose where Inkwell’s own sounds play. Alt+Shift+M turns those sounds off and on.
• Help > Find a Setting or Command (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S) searches every menu at once. Type part of a name and press Enter on the row you want.
• Help > What’s New (Ctrl+Shift+F1) opens Inkwell’s changelog in your browser, on the same key as every other QuillVille app.
• The QuillVille menu opens the other apps in the family. For example, press Alt+Q, then R, to open Quill Radio. If an app is not installed, Inkwell offers to download it, and nothing downloads until you say yes.

Getting it

There are two downloads. Choose one.

• Quill-Inkwell-Setup-Shared-1.0.0.exe, the installer. It installs the shared QuillVille runtime if your computer does not have it yet, then Inkwell, with a Start menu entry and an uninstaller. It does not need administrator rights.
• Quill-Inkwell-Portable-1.0.0.zip, the portable copy. Unpack it anywhere, such as a USB stick. It keeps your abbreviations and settings in its own data folder beside the program. A portable QUILL in the same place shares them, and nothing is left on the computer when you take the stick away.

Inkwell runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and Windows 11. Nothing downloads the first time you use it.

Options > Start Quill Inkwell with Windows starts it hidden in the notification area when you sign in, which is how most people run it. Closing the window keeps expansion running. Turn off Options > Close button keeps expanding if you want the close button to exit.

For Dictate Anywhere, there is one thing to know. To keep Inkwell small, its downloads do not include the built-in speech models, Moonshine and Whisper, or the speech part that runs them. Downloaded models, OpenAI and the speech providers need that part too. On a computer with only Inkwell, you have two choices:

1. Choose Windows speech recognition in Dictation Settings. It needs nothing extra, but you say the punctuation yourself.
2. Install QUILL Transcribe, which carries the built-in models. While it is running, your Dictate Anywhere key uses it.

Essential keys

Every dialog works the same way: Escape cancels, Enter presses the default button, and every control has a name your screen reader reads. Press F1 on any window or control to hear what it is for.

Privacy

Inkwell has to notice what you type to recognise an abbreviation. This is exactly what that means.

• It holds at most 64 characters at a time, in memory only.
• Nothing you type is saved, logged or sent anywhere. Expansion has no network code at all.
• That memory is cleared after every expansion, on Escape, on arrow and other movement keys, on any Ctrl or Alt combination, when you switch windows, and when expansion is off.
• It never decides anything from what you typed. Where to expand is decided only from which window is in front.
• It never expands in password managers, the Windows sign-in and lock screens, the Windows credential prompt, or the administrator permission prompt. You can add programs of your own with Options > Excluded Applications….
• An ordinary expansion never touches your clipboard. The clipboard is read only for an expansion that asks for it, and is never stored.
• Ctrl+Shift+E stops it. Safe Mode never starts it.

Dictate Anywhere treats your speech as the editors do. It stays on your computer with Windows speech recognition and the built-in or downloaded models. It goes to a company only if you choose OpenAI or a speech provider yourself and say yes when asked, and No is the default. Nothing you say is recorded or kept.

Known limits

• Programs running as administrator. Windows does not let a normal program see what you type there, so nothing expands and dictation will not type there. Inkwell tells you the first time. To use it there, start Inkwell as administrator too.
• Some programs drop fast typing. If text arrives scrambled or cut short in one program, turn on Options > Insert by pasting. Inkwell then pastes the text and puts your clipboard back afterwards. The user guide explains how to do this for one program only.
• Plain text only. An expansion is typed as plain text. Formatted text is not supported yet.
• One list for every program. You cannot yet make an abbreviation that works only in one program.
• Dictate Anywhere cannot read the other program’s text. Commands such as “select”, “go to”, “copy all” and correcting a word by name work only in QUILL’s own documents. Corrections that retype words are refused in Word and Outlook; “scratch that” and the delete commands still work there.
• Spanish dictation takes English commands. Say “QUILL scratch that” in Spanish dictation too.
• Windows only. There is no Mac version.

Not done yet

We would rather tell you what is unfinished than have you find out.

• Testing in named programs is not finished. Inkwell is meant to work wherever you can type. A recorded round of testing in particular programs, such as Notepad, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Word and Outlook, with NVDA, JAWS and Narrator, is still to be done. If something does not expand where you expect, please tell us where.
• More commands for other programs are planned. Snippets, spelling, grammar review and changing text you have selected in another program are not in 1.0.
• Abbreviations from Quillins. QUILL’s editor expands abbreviations that Quillins add. Inkwell does not yet.
• An optional companion for the Clipman clipboard manager is planned. It will never be required.

Inkwell keeps no clipboard history and has no macros or scripting. That is on purpose, not unfinished.

Your version, and updates

Help > About Quill Inkwell says 1.0.0 (build 2). A fix that comes out without a new version number is a newer build. Help > Check for Updates… offers it, and only looks when you ask.

Getting help

The Quill Inkwell User Guide explains everything here in full, including a troubleshooting section for when nothing expands.

Support is run by Community Access. Write to support@community-access.org, or use Help > Get Help from Support… (Ctrl+Alt+F2). It writes the message in your own mail program, with Inkwell’s version filled in, and nothing is sent until you send it. A person reads every message.