Symboliser Help

Overview

Symboliser runs in the background and monitors your text selections across all Windows applications. When you select text by dragging with your mouse, a small floating button appears near the selection. Click the button and a symbol panel opens, showing your selected text with communication symbols displayed above each recognised word.

Symbolised Text

▶ 🖶 ⚙

The

cat

sat

on

the

warm

mat

Symboliser uses a three-tier matching system (direct lookup, lemmatisation, and synonym matching) to find symbols for the widest possible range of words. The panel also includes text-to-speech with word-by-word highlighting, printing, and customisable settings.

Getting Started

1

Select text

Click and drag to select text in any application.

The cat sat on the mat

2

Click the button

A floating indigo button appears near your cursor.

Symbolise

3

View symbols

The panel shows symbols above each recognised word.

the

cat

sat

The Symbolise Button

When you select text in any application, a small floating button appears near the end of your selection:

Symbolise

• The button appears to the right of where you released the mouse, positioned above the cursor.
• It stays visible for 5 seconds, then fades away automatically.
• Clicking anywhere else on screen or pressing Escape will also dismiss the button.
• The button does not steal focus from the application you are working in.

The Symbol Panel

Clicking the Symbolise button opens a panel that displays your selected text with symbols above each word.

Panel Header Controls

Content Area

The content area shows your text with symbols rendered above each recognised word. The text is read-only — you can select and copy text (Ctrl+C) but cannot edit it. You can navigate using arrow keys, Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down.

Clicking on a symbol image moves the cursor to the start of that word, which is useful for positioning speech playback.

Symbol Matching

Symboliser uses a three-tier matching system to find symbols for as many words as possible:

1 Direct Match

The word is looked up directly in the symbol library.

“cat” → cat symbol found

cat

dog

house

book

2 Lemmatisation

The word is reduced to its base form, then looked up.

“running” → “run” → run symbol

running

children

walked

drinks

3 Synonym Lookup

A synonym dictionary (692,000+ entries) finds a related word with a symbol.

“enormous” → “big” → big symbol

enormous

joyful

automobile

beverage

How to Tell the Difference

• Words with a direct or lemmatised match appear in normal text colour. Lemmatised matches show a tooltip (e.g. “Symbol via run”).
• Words matched via a synonym appear in red text. Hovering shows which synonym provided the symbol.
• Words with no symbol at all have no image above them.

Speech Synthesis

Symboliser can read the panel text aloud using any Windows voice, with word-by-word highlighting.

Symbolised Text

■

The

cat▶ speaking

sat

on

the

mat

• Click ▶ Play to begin reading from the cursor position.
• Each spoken word is highlighted with a red underline.
• The panel auto-scrolls to keep the current word visible.
• Click ■ Stop to pause. Click any word to reposition, then Play to resume.

Voice Selection

Choose a voice from the dropdown in the Settings panel. All installed Windows voices are listed with their name and language. Your selection is saved between sessions.

Settings

Click the ⚙ gear icon to open the settings panel in the top-right corner.

Symbol Sets

Symboliser includes a range of symbol sets. Use the Symbols dropdown in Settings to switch between them. The default set is PiCom Classic.

Sample symbols from PiCom Classic

cat

dog

eat

run

tree

car

book

water

Your symbol set selection is saved between sessions.

Loading Custom Symbol Sets

Select Load from disk... at the bottom of the Symbols dropdown to load your own symbols from a ZIP file. The ZIP should contain image files (PNG, JPG, GIF, SVG, or WEBP). Symbol names are derived from filenames:

• Underscores and hyphens become spaces (e.g. ice_cream.png becomes “ice cream”).
• Bliss naming conventions are supported: verb markers -(to) and parenthesised suffixes are removed.
• Mulberry naming conventions are supported: _,_to suffixes are removed.
• Comma-separated names create multiple entries (e.g. a,an,any.png creates symbols for “a”, “an”, and “any”).

Custom symbols replace the current set and are stored locally so they persist across sessions.

Printing

Click the 🖶 Print button or press Ctrl+P to print the symbolised text. The printed output includes all symbol images positioned above their words, using the current symbol size setting. The layout is portrait orientation with 15mm margins.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Troubleshooting

The button does not appear when I select text

Symboliser detects text selections made by dragging the mouse. Ensure you are dragging at least a small distance before releasing. Some applications may not support copying selected text — try a different application to confirm Symboliser is working.

No symbols appear

Symboliser defaults to the PiCom Classic symbol set. If no symbols appear, try selecting a different set from the Symbols dropdown in Settings. Common words like “the”, “cat”, and “dog” should always have symbols. You can also load a custom symbol set via Load from disk... in the dropdown.

Speech does not start

Ensure the panel contains text and that a Windows voice is available. Try selecting a different voice from the dropdown in Settings. If no voices appear in the dropdown, you may need to install speech voices via Windows Settings > Time & Language > Speech.

Symboliser appears in the taskbar but nothing happens

Symboliser runs as a hidden background application. It only shows UI when you select text and click the floating button. If a second instance is launched, a message will appear — only one instance can run at a time.