22. A text input system, comprising: a direction selector operable in a coordinate system to point in a radial direction toward one or more linguistic object subcomponents; a predetermined or dynamic mapping between directions and linguistic object subcomponents; a collection of linguistic objects; an output device with a text display area; a processor, comprising an object evaluation component configured to identify at least one linguistic object based on a sequence of radial directions; and a selection component to facilitate user selection of a desired linguistic object wherein said object evaluation component matches said sequence of radial directions against predetermined sequences of directional values associated with each linguistic object and identifies at least one linguistic object whose associated directional values minimize the differences with said sequence of radial directions.
22. A text input system, comprising: a direction selector operable in a coordinate system to point in a radial direction toward one or more linguistic object subcomponents; a predetermined or dynamic mapping between directions and linguistic object subcomponents; a collection of linguistic objects; an output device with a text display area; a processor, comprising an object evaluation component configured to identify at least one linguistic object based on a sequence of radial directions; and a selection component to facilitate user selection of a desired linguistic object wherein said object evaluation component matches said sequence of radial directions against predetermined sequences of directional values associated with each linguistic object and identifies at least one linguistic object whose associated directional values minimize the differences with said sequence of radial directions. 23. The system of claim 22 , wherein said identification of at least one linguistic object is further based on a linguistic model wherein the linguistic model comprises one or more of: frequency of occurrence of a linguistic object in formal or conversational written text; frequency of occurrence of a linguistic object when following a preceding linguistic object or linguistic objects; proper or common grammar of the surrounding sentence; application context of current linguistic object entry; and recency of use or repeated use of the linguistic object by the user or within an application program.