Patent ID: 7921361

Claim:
A handheld personal computing device comprising: a touch-sensitive display; a processing unit; and a computer-readable medium comprising computer-readable instructions for directing the processing unit to assist with character generation and entry by: displaying a digital keyboard on the touch-sensitive display, the digital keyboard comprising a plurality of characters; detecting a first type of contact by a user with the touch-sensitive display that corresponds to selection of any of the plurality of characters; selecting a plurality of completion candidates from a set of completion candidates stored in a dictionary, based on the first type of contact by the user with the touch-sensitive display; displaying the plurality of completion candidates in a search list for user selection; detecting a second type of contact by the user with the touch-sensitive display that corresponds to selection of at least one of the plurality of completion candidates, wherein the second type of contact includes a gesture; selecting the at least one of the plurality of completion candidates corresponding to the gesture; generating a string in response to at least one of the first type of contact and the second type of contact; displaying the string on the touch-sensitive display; obtaining a modified plurality of completion candidates from the dictionary in response to a user input signal corresponding to use of a particular completion candidate in the search list to retrieve completion candidates from the dictionary that begin with the particular completion candidate; clearing the search list; and displaying the modified plurality of completion candidates in the search list.