[HN Gopher] Unexpected Keyboard
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Unexpected Keyboard
        
       Author : twoquestions
       Score  : 252 points
       Date   : 2024-12-10 13:43 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | out_of_protocol wrote:
       | Calculator++ is lovely, i like how it works. These swiping
       | buttons especially usefull on small-ish screens.
       | 
       | P.S. tried keyboard, should work wery well with termux. Did not
       | figure out how to swith to next language. Custom keys, yay!
        
         | lovegrenoble wrote:
         | where's the link to Calculator++ ?
        
           | uneekname wrote:
           | It's listed as a "similar app" in the README. I think it has
           | a similar feature where you can swipe on keyboard keys to
           | type different characters.
        
         | justsomehnguy wrote:
         | > Did not figure out how to swith to next language
         | 
         | 1. Select the needed ones in the settings
         | 
         | 1. Swipe up on the space bar
        
           | out_of_protocol wrote:
           | Swipe on specebar = cursor movement, which is useful
        
             | out_of_protocol wrote:
             | Edit: manually added languages again in settings and "swipe
             | up" action appear
        
       | desireco42 wrote:
       | I just installed it...mind blown. Thank you for posting this.
       | 
       | Super easy to use... usual spelling errors are gone... would need
       | a multilingual/serbian keyboard :) as well
        
         | ivanche wrote:
         | It has both latin and cyrillic! Go to settings and tap Add an
         | alternate layout.
        
       | tetris11 wrote:
       | I've been unsatisfied with Heliboard, so I might give this a try
        
       | norswap wrote:
       | See MessagEase for a similar keyboard (not programmer-focused)
       | with less keys but letting you use the swiping motion to type
       | ordinary -- great for fat-fingered people.
        
         | kqr wrote:
         | In a similar category we find also GKOS (uses chording to get
         | the corner symbols) and I will always have a soft spot for
         | KeyBee.
         | 
         | https://entropicthoughts.com/rethinking-text-input-on-touchs...
        
         | Nullabillity wrote:
         | I'd call MessagEase-style keyboards good for programming too -
         | no (need for) autocorrect, and the extra room lets you squeeze
         | in most symbols and modifiers.
        
         | CarVac wrote:
         | Or Thumb-key, an open-source take on that.
        
           | rahimnathwani wrote:
           | How long does it take to learn
           | https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key ?
           | 
           | Is it like retraining yourself to use Dvorak? Or more like
           | learning the Palm strokes?
        
             | bean-weevil wrote:
             | I switched to dvorak a few years ago and to thumb-key this
             | year. I would say that thumb-key is much easier to learn
             | than dvorak. I simply switched to it and about three months
             | later, I realized I had gotten up to almost my original
             | typing speed without any directed effort. I originally
             | typed at 45 wpm on AnySoftKeyboard, and now I type at 40
             | wpm on thumb-key. This is in contrast to dvorak, which took
             | six months of at least 15mins a day of dedicated practice
             | time to surpass my original speed.
        
               | kqr wrote:
               | Did you continue to use Qwerty for work? I was in the
               | fortunate position of switching to Colemak at a fairly
               | non-critical time of life, so I cold turkeyed it.
               | 
               | Took about two weeks of daily driving until it was no
               | longer painful, then three months until I had matched
               | Qwerty speed. So probably similar to your thumb-key
               | experience.
        
             | CarVac wrote:
             | Faster than Dvorak. Unlike switching from fluent QWERTY to
             | an initially slow other-layout, you're switching from the
             | frustrating autocorrupt to something deterministic and
             | predictable.
             | 
             | I picked it up to a usable speed within two days, helped by
             | the fact that I use a lot of technical terms that
             | autocorrect used to dismantle, so the baseline was much
             | worse.
        
               | fredoliveira wrote:
               | > frustrating autocorrupt
               | 
               | Look -- I don't know if it was on purpose, but I
               | chuckled.
        
           | Nullabillity wrote:
           | I'd argue FlickBoard is closer, but I'm probably very biased!
        
           | IIsi50MHz wrote:
           | Thumb-key also has many alternate layouts, including clones
           | of MessageEase layouts. However, MessageEase layouts are
           | easier to edit: directly on device, instead of via pull-
           | request.
        
         | zimpenfish wrote:
         | See also FITALY[1] which was amazing on the Pocket PCs but has
         | sadly (criminally) not made it to being an iOS keyboard.
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITALY
        
           | rgreekguy wrote:
           | Generally I feel keyboards on iOS are almost non-existent,
           | especially combined with App Store's (lack of)
           | discoverability. A simple search for keyboard brings up only
           | GBoard and Microsoft's. And emoji and Unicode "fancy
           | characters" keyboards. The only new keyboard I found today,
           | thanks to this thread is called "AEI Keyboard".
           | 
           | I actually want to get around making something customisable.
           | A keyboard that you will put whatever keys you want, wherever
           | you want. iPhone is too small for a comfortable keyboard,
           | otherwise.
        
         | ChadNauseam wrote:
         | I've learned MessageEase, and it's great for that feeling of
         | having a direct connection to what you're typing (no mistakes,
         | and no annoying autocorrect messing you up), but I always found
         | it slower than swipe-typing
        
         | Ginguin wrote:
         | MessagEase has been my go-to for years. I swapped this year to
         | thumb-key when MessagEase went to a subscription.
         | 
         | I love the ability to quickly copy, paste, select-all, type
         | special characters, etc., all without having to do anything
         | complicated. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the
         | layout, but now I type exactly what I want, as I want it,
         | without any auto-correct or automation needed. I make few
         | errors and love the whole way of doing it. QWERTY makes very
         | little sense on such a small screen, but it's what people know.
        
       | gavinhoward wrote:
       | This was...unexpected...
       | 
       | Unexpectedly good. I am definitely going to relearn typing on my
       | phone just to use this.
        
       | zuluonezero wrote:
       | Thanks this seems very good. Being able to flick #! off the 'e'
       | is nice. The position of . and , is a bit weird on the left of
       | the keybord. But i do like the curser control and brackets usage.
       | There is some buggy activity with capitals appearing eg
       | ttt55555%%%%%TTT% randomly. And it misses autocomplete and auto
       | capitalisation for general usec
        
       | kqr wrote:
       | I used to have a phone with a physical keyboard that had a ctrl
       | key. I can't live without ctrl-z, ctrl-v, etc. This keyboard made
       | it possible to go to a fully-touchscreen phone without being too
       | miserable!
       | 
       | (Although some level of misery is hard to get out of with only a
       | touchscreen.)
       | 
       | I have used this keyboard for over a year now I think and it's
       | really good.
        
         | metalliqaz wrote:
         | I have never felt the loss of ctrl+key combinations on my
         | phone. For what do you use these things? For example, if I'm
         | already using my finger to select text, I can just long press
         | to copy.
        
           | kqr wrote:
           | But I'm not selecting with gestures! I press ctrl-a most of
           | the time. Then I might adjust with shift-space-swipe, much
           | like I would with arrow keys on a physical keyboard.
           | 
           | I hate long pressing. It's so slow and imprecise.
           | 
           | Ctrl-z to undo is an action usually not available from the
           | context menu or elsewhere.
           | 
           | Oh and pressing ctrl-d to send EOF in a subshell in Termux is
           | much more convenient than typing "exit" or whatever.
        
             | jazzyjackson wrote:
             | On iOS there was at least at some point a "shake to undo"
             | or a 3 fingered swipe I could never get to trigger,
             | infuriating, I just live without undo now.
        
               | vulcan01 wrote:
               | On recent iOS versions, you can tap the screen with 3
               | fingers to get a popup that has 3 options (undo, copy,
               | and paste IIRC).
        
               | shwouchk wrote:
               | Nice to know! I'm used to having to vigorously shake my
               | phone for undo. And for it randomly popping on when i
               | pull it from a pocket...
        
               | xp84 wrote:
               | The 3 finger tap is infuriatingly hard to trigger for me
               | since if you don't sync your fingers' taps perfectly,
               | you're tapping random elements on the screen, potentially
               | doing something bad, like saving/sending out the bad
               | change, that you were trying to undo. A single triple-tap
               | would have been better, but also there is a full SQUARE
               | INCH of wasted space below the iOS keyboard on current
               | phones. Idk why they can't make use of some of it to open
               | a cut/copy/paste/undo menu, or heck, add command and
               | control keys too!
        
               | lencastre wrote:
               | What? When?
        
             | NooneAtAll3 wrote:
             | can you explain more about ctrl+d?
        
               | notpushkin wrote:
               | It sends the End Of File character. In most terminal
               | applications, this ends an interactive session. E.g. if
               | you're in a Python REPL and are done with it, you can
               | press Ctrl-D and it will close and return to Bash. Press
               | Ctrl-D once more and Bash will exit as well (and in most
               | cases the terminal emulator will then close, too).
               | 
               | So, just a conventional shortcut to close things.
        
           | makeitdouble wrote:
           | The Select -> touch to copy is a miserable interaction to me.
           | 
           | Selecting the appropriate text is already a challenge in so
           | many circumstances. Having to tap again exactly inside the
           | selection, then choose from the floating menu are two more
           | failure points and interaction lag.
           | 
           | It's especially painful when trying to select single
           | characters (which happens a lot in CJK land).
           | 
           | I wish I could join the GBoard team for two weeks, just add
           | an optional ctrl key, and quit.
           | 
           | PS: Actually, mapping the physical Volume Up to Copy, Volume
           | Down to Paste whenever there's no media playing or some other
           | condition could be the best choice.
        
             | xp84 wrote:
             | This is probably irrelevant to you, but the Samsung
             | keyboard on a Samsung Galaxy tablet has a control key. I
             | love that keyboard. It's been too long since I had a
             | Samsung phone to know if it has an option for that too. It
             | does have a number row option too, something I deeply
             | resent not having an option for on iOS.
        
               | JadeNB wrote:
               | > ... the Samsung keyboard on a Samsung Galaxy tablet has
               | a control key. ... It's been too long since I had a
               | Samsung phone to know if it has an option for that too.
               | 
               | I just tried on a Galaxy A54, and don't see such an
               | option.
        
           | creshal wrote:
           | Finger text selection is really clumsy and error prone, and
           | copypasting is even worse.
        
           | alexisread wrote:
           | One word, emacs ;)
        
       | yellowapple wrote:
       | I've been using this for a couple years now and it's been
       | fantastic. Just the Compose Key support alone is a godsend. The
       | swiping takes some getting used to, but with practice it now
       | feels second-nature.
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | Do you not need astonishing precision to not make any mistakes?
        
           | yellowapple wrote:
           | I don't feel like I make more mistakes than I typically do
           | with any other smartphone keyboard. One particularly annoying
           | mistake I make all the time is hitting backspace when I meant
           | to hit a character near it, but that was always a problem
           | with other keyboards and my fat thumbs, too.
        
       | arcanemachiner wrote:
       | Just installed it now. I think it's missing the '2 spaces for
       | period-and-space' feature but it seems pretty nice other than
       | that! (I guess that makes sense for a programming keyboard
       | though.)
        
         | natebc wrote:
         | > '2 spaces for period-and-space'
         | 
         | I hate to be the one to break it to you but ... I think we're
         | not supposed to do this any more? It's a change I still
         | struggle with.
         | 
         | Apologies to any I've offended with this. Style guides were
         | updated in the last 4-5 years to say that one single space
         | after a period is correct. I think Word even changed how it
         | handles it as well.
         | 
         | https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/punctuatio...
        
           | winterbloom wrote:
           | what's wrong with this?
        
           | drdec wrote:
           | I believe the GP meant that some keyboards will produce '. '
           | when the spacebar is tapped twice.
        
           | xp84 wrote:
           | Yeah on Apple devices two spaces gets converted to a period
           | and _one_ space. It's just a shortcut, it doesn't leave the 2
           | spaces in.
        
       | caxco93 wrote:
       | now I can use this and try to be like this guy
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42374823
        
       | guyzero wrote:
       | Very innovative but it seems to require a level of precision that
       | I don't think I've achieved on a phone keyboard.
        
       | stavros wrote:
       | Is there a keyboard that uses GPT-2 or some other such LLM to
       | predict what I'm trying to write? SwiftKey is amazing because I
       | can tap in the general vicinity of keys and it always writes the
       | right thing, but it's fairly abandoned with a few perplexing
       | bugs.
       | 
       | I'd love to find a maintained keyboard that can predict as well
       | as SwiftKey, and has all the other "simple" niceties SwiftKey has
       | on Android (second layer with long press, configurable durations,
       | customizable keys, emoji search, etc).
        
         | bean-weevil wrote:
         | [FUTO Keyboard](https://keyboard.futo.org/) uses a local LLM
         | for suggestions and corrections.
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | Thank you!
        
           | brunoqc wrote:
           | I like the idea of their keyboard a lot, but I wish they
           | didn't use that license.
        
             | bean-weevil wrote:
             | I don't like it either. I'm glad they started calling it
             | Source First(tm) instead of incorrectly calling it open
             | source though.
        
           | desireco42 wrote:
           | I use it, it is not very good, ie. it is pretty bad in terms
           | of predictions. Love the mission and everything, just
           | prediction is bad.
           | 
           | I thought once it learns it will be better, but it's been
           | months..
        
           | rpdillon wrote:
           | FUTO is mediocre with swiping and predictions in my
           | experience, but the 70M parameter voice model is stunningly
           | good at 30-second voice to text. It has completely changed
           | how I think about using my phone to draft prose - my first
           | drafts are now often from my phone, snippets collected in
           | moments when it occurs to me on-the-fly. It's been a really
           | significant shift in the utility of my phone, and because
           | it's installable through F-Droid, I have it on my Amazon
           | tablet, and Boox reader. It's worked really well across all
           | of them.
        
             | stavros wrote:
             | Have you tried it recently? Their predictions/corrections
             | were great for me.
        
               | bogwog wrote:
               | Ive been using it exclusively for months, and while I do
               | like it, I ended up turning off predictions because of
               | how bad they were. The swipe typing feature is also
               | pretty bad, which is my biggest gripe with it since I
               | love typing like that.
        
           | cassepipe wrote:
           | I must thank you for the recommendation. Works offline, not
           | cluttered, good defaults, plenty of options and some clever
           | one, voice input and prediction both work well for me, no
           | subscription but instead you can buy a lifetime license to
           | support them. Also it looks good and responsive. I love it.
        
         | troupo wrote:
         | > Is there a keyboard that uses GPT-2 or some other such LLM to
         | predict what I'm trying to write? SwiftKey is amazing because I
         | can tap in the general vicinity of keys
         | 
         | You don't need GPT for that, you need a dictionary lookup and
         | some stats on how the keyboard is used. See how Ken Kocienda
         | implemented the original virtual keyboard for iOS:
         | https://hiddenheroes.netguru.com/hurst-han-kocienda Scroll down
         | to "But as promising as the Purple interface was, the software
         | suffered from a potentially fatal flaw: it was impossible to
         | use a virtual keyboard on a phone-sized screen. "
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | Well, I know I don't _need_ it, but it 's still nice. I'm
           | writing this with FUTO right now, and it's fantastic, it's
           | correcting all my little mistypes to the exact right thing.
        
         | noAnswer wrote:
         | The keyboard with the best prediction and self learning was my
         | (first smartphone) Sony Xperia Z5 from 2015. I only realized it
         | was a Sony specific app later in life. (I didn't understand
         | auto correction memes until I got a work phone with a google
         | keyboard.) Sadly they don't offer it as a stand alone app. I
         | would pay for it.
         | 
         | I have settled for FUTO Keyboard for now. Bevor that I used
         | SwiftKey. (The Sony is still the only one where I did see
         | contextual self-learning/prediction.)
        
         | kristopolous wrote:
         | The only thing I really want is a keyboard that doesn't think
         | I'm trying to type "Ava" all the time I'm typing "and".
         | Dictionary removal would be just great. I don't ever intend to
         | type "Ava". It has been my intention exactly Zero times.
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | I get the same with SwiftKey, it tries to replace "my" with
           | "NY", which I never ever mean. FUTO has a blacklist, at
           | least. I'm going to switch back to Android just for the
           | keyboards.
        
           | gregschlom wrote:
           | Do you by chance have a contact named Ava in your address
           | book? If so you can try changing their name, or disabling the
           | option to provide auto complete suggestions from your address
           | book
        
             | kristopolous wrote:
             | No. I know nobody with that name. The only time it is in my
             | record is the dozens of times the phone wrongly guessed
             | that's what I was trying to do and I sent it.
             | 
             | Just a slight, tiny, grammatical parser would fix this.
             | Nothing heavy. Just a look behind parser
        
           | tasuki wrote:
           | You just did! Twice!
        
         | LeoPanthera wrote:
         | Apparently the iPhone predictions literally do use GPT-2, or at
         | least a model based on it:
         | 
         | https://jackcook.com/2023/09/08/predictive-text.html
        
           | xp84 wrote:
           | It's too bad that its swiping performance is so shockingly
           | bad. I cannot ever get it to swipe the word you without
           | tapping a correction from the gray bar. The mandatory way it
           | interprets swiping to those 3 letters, no matter how precise,
           | is always turned into "your."
           | 
           | I hate the iOS keyboard situation so much. Third party ones
           | either crash and dump you randomly on the Apple one, or they
           | have their own frustrating bugs. And the Apple one is of
           | course more stable (or maybe just relaunches so fast nobody
           | knows when it crashes) but it is ruined by its lack of a
           | number row (or any other options) as well as bugs like the
           | above.
        
             | LeoPanthera wrote:
             | You you you I am swiping you.
             | 
             | That's funny. It works fine for me. Although swiping comes
             | out as "sweeping".
        
         | pandemic_region wrote:
         | > SwiftKey is amazing because I can tap in the general vicinity
         | of keys and it always writes the right thing
         | 
         | Not my experience at all. Been using it for 10 years, whenever
         | I manage to write a 10 word sentence without needing to correct
         | anything I feel like i just won the lottery.
        
         | NooneAtAll3 wrote:
         | it's always so strange to see people on the opposite side of
         | precision spectrum
         | 
         | I disable auto-correct and word suggestions, always get annoyed
         | by "drag around and find out what your mistap gave you!"
         | features - and here I read someone _dreaming_ about "general
         | vicinity" understand-er
         | 
         | fascinating
        
       | Elfener wrote:
       | I have been using this for a few years now. Has all the keys I
       | could want. Actually makes ssh-ing from termux not a bad
       | experience.
       | 
       | My mom (not a programmer) uses it as well because she is able to
       | type much faster with the swiping than with a regular touch
       | keyboard.
        
       | girvo wrote:
       | Does anyone else remember the "TouchPal" keyboard on Windows
       | Mobile?
       | 
       | It was similar in some ways.
       | 
       | https://i0.wp.com/farm3.static.flickr.com/2142/1622925926_3a...
       | 
       | QW and a symbol were all on one key in a T shaped layout - Q top
       | left, W top right, symbol below, you could just hit the key as-is
       | and let predictive text/auto-correct do it's thing (badly, at the
       | time).
       | 
       | The more interesting way to use it was to swipe on the key in the
       | direction of the letter/symbol you wanted.
       | 
       | It was really quite good, and a shame it never caught on.
        
       | tasuki wrote:
       | I'm desperate for an Android keyboard! I need to type English,
       | Czech, and Polish. We live in the age of LLMs, they not only know
       | the words, they know how to use them together! Shocking!
       | 
       | I'd like to use glide typing (slide finger to type). Yet all the
       | Android keyboards I've tried (GBoard and Microsoft SwifKey) can't
       | hint basic forms of words an elementary school child would know.
       | 
       | Wrt Unexpected Keyboard, I find it tedious to type all letters
       | separately on a touchscreen. Don't you?
       | 
       | Help me!
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | Someone downthread proposed FUTO keyboard, I'm trying it right
         | now and it's fantastic. Give it a shot !
        
         | aftbit wrote:
         | I used to use slide typing, but I've mostly reverted to
         | tapping, at least the first 3 or 4 letters, until autocomplete
         | can figure out what I want. I'm not really sure why, it just
         | feels more natural.
        
         | gitaarik wrote:
         | Did you try AnySoft Keyboard?
        
       | justsomehnguy wrote:
       | Using it since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32658104
       | 
       | What doesn't work:
       | 
       | 1. Ctrl/Alt isn't passed to RDP session in the official MS app.
       | 
       | 1. Sometimes number input moves the decimal to a swipe and this
       | is kinda... dumb.
       | 
       | It's not as fast as Hacker's Keyboard but overall it works good
       | and I even did wrote some small things on it.
       | 
       | I replaced all HK with UK on all my phones and one tablet.
       | 
       | Can recommend.
        
       | a_e_k wrote:
       | Interesting. I've been using the Hacker's Keyboard with Termux,
       | but it doesn't seem to have received any updates in a long time.
       | (I'm fine with programs being considered complete, but I also
       | realize that Android is unfortunately a moving target.)
       | 
       | Has anyone used both and could compare them?
        
         | z2h-a6n wrote:
         | I've used both, though I'm not sure I can compare them
         | directly, since it has been a year or more since I switched
         | from Hacker's Keyboard.
         | 
         | Unexpected Keyboard works well for me when using Termux,
         | possibly even better than Hacker's Keyboard, since I find it
         | easier to swipe on a key to get to uncommonly-used symbols
         | rather than switching to a different keyboard layer. Every now
         | and then I accidentally swipe a key when I meant to press it,
         | and end up entering a accented character when I didn't mean to,
         | but this is fairly rare. I don't use Termux very often, but for
         | occasional vim or terminal usage it's totally sufficient.
         | 
         | One cool feature of Unexpected Keyboard (which may be available
         | elsewhere, I haven't looked at many others) is that you can
         | swipe left and right on the space bar to quickly and accurately
         | scroll left and right in a text field. I find this about as
         | fast as tapping at a position in a text field, but much more
         | accurate.
        
           | cfiggers wrote:
           | > One cool feature of Unexpected Keyboard (which may be
           | available elsewhere, I haven't looked at many others) is that
           | you can swipe left and right on the space bar to quickly and
           | accurately scroll left and right in a text field.
           | 
           | Nice! That's a feature of Google's GBoard, which ships as the
           | default on Pixels but is available to most Android phones. I
           | use it _extremely_ often (including twice while writing this
           | comment) and not having it is one of the big reasons I found
           | Hacker Keyboard frustrating. Hearing that Unexpected Keyboard
           | has it is pushing me over the edge to give it a trial run.
        
             | kqr wrote:
             | Does GBoard allow you to select text by pressing shift and
             | then swiping on space?
        
               | throwaway290 wrote:
               | I just found out I can do it on iphone thanks to your
               | comment. Wow.
        
             | LoganDark wrote:
             | Gboard's implementation is super annoying for me because it
             | keeps trying to skip over word boundaries, and it's quite
             | difficult to move just one or two characters over, because
             | it waits for you to swipe far enough before activating any
             | movement. Just awful.
        
               | JadeNB wrote:
               | > Gboard's implementation is super annoying for me
               | because it keeps trying to skip over word boundaries, and
               | it's quite difficult to move just one or two characters
               | over, because it waits for you to swipe far enough before
               | activating any movement. Just awful.
               | 
               | This is interesting--Gboard also by default uses a long-
               | press on the space bar to change keyboards, so I often
               | find myself triggering that while meaning to scroll (or,
               | more often, meaning to long press 'n' for '!'), but, as
               | long as I'm quick enough, I've never observed it to be
               | hesitant about moving one or two characters.
        
           | Grimblewald wrote:
           | One hugely underated offering of unexpected keyboard is the
           | ease with which you can define entierly new keyboards. Want a
           | keyboard for futhark runes? They're unicode so go for it, you
           | totally can. Like thorn as a concept and a character, and
           | want to use it with ease? then add it for easy use. This
           | keyboard is truly the hackers keyboard. I spent a month using
           | termux exclusively, writing cli apps for things as i needed
           | them and without unexpected keyboard that would have been a
           | really painful experience, rather than mildly inconveniant at
           | times.
        
             | sandbach wrote:
             | Apologies for pedantry: in dat case you should have used Th
             | U+00DE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN, as it begins a sentence.
        
               | skrebbel wrote:
               | This is what I come to HN for
        
           | wcrossbow wrote:
           | > is that you can swipe left and right on the space bar to
           | quickly and accurately scroll left and right in a text field.
           | I find this about as fast as tapping at a position in a text
           | field, but much more accurate
           | 
           | I recently learned about a hidden iphone feature. If you hold
           | the spacebar for about halve a second you can move freely the
           | cursor around any text field.
        
         | tcrenshaw wrote:
         | I used Hacker's keyboard for years before moving over to
         | unexpected keyboard for any terminal work done via phone.
         | Unexpected keyboard gives easier access to symbols and has
         | slightly larger keys (less keys on the main layer) than
         | Hacker's keyboard.
         | 
         | I still use Gboard for my main keyboard, but looking for
         | replacement suggestions that have a good swipe to text
        
           | tasuki wrote:
           | Yes, jesus, swipe to text! It's 21st century! Why can't they
           | make it recognize various basic words in the three languages
           | I use?
        
           | notpushkin wrote:
           | FUTO Keyboard comes to mind: https://keyboard.futo.org/
           | 
           | Swipe worked pretty well but I had some problems (perhaps
           | switching languages or something? can't remember) so I
           | switched back to plain AOSP keyboard for now.
        
         | creshal wrote:
         | I started with Hacker's Keyboard and moved to Unexpected
         | because Hacker's stopped working on newer Android devices. It's
         | not a 1:1 replacement, but it works really well once you get
         | used to it, and it also works as a decent general purpose
         | keyboard.
        
         | tester457 wrote:
         | Unexpected Keyboard allows you to create your own keyboard
         | layouts so I prefer it.
        
       | gitaarik wrote:
       | Very nice keyboard. It would be so awesome if auto-complete and
       | auto-correct would be added as optional features.
        
       | amake wrote:
       | This is very similar to Japanese "flick" input:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhD6r8NKlmY
        
         | 3r7j6qzi9jvnve wrote:
         | Japanese flick input is closer to thumb-key (
         | https://github.com/dessalines/thumb-key I just discovered in
         | another comment), and even that's a bit different as you get to
         | input a consonant+vowel pair at a time (e.g. ka-ki-ku-ke-ko on
         | a key)
         | 
         | I switch between Japanese input and hacker keyboard all the
         | time for termux and it's much faster to type Japanese; this
         | thread made me want to try both thumb-key and unexpected
         | keyboard but I think I'll try thumb-key first.
        
       | shwouchk wrote:
       | Awesome stuff! I used to use Hackers Keyboard (up until ... now!)
       | but it's not OSS, hasnt been updated, and i use the swipe even
       | there.
       | 
       | Thanks for sharing!
       | 
       | [edit]
       | 
       | Even more for making!
        
       | romulobribeiro wrote:
       | I literally downloaded last week this keyboard to do the Advent
       | of Code on the go
        
       | eviks wrote:
       | Great idea to allow multiple symbols per key, though it's not
       | worth losing swipe over, so these should be behind a longer key
       | press (hold for .5 sec then swipe to the corner ) or a double tap
       | Is they any keyboard that combines those and is also
       | customizable?
       | 
       | The numbers should also be in a numpad layout, unfortunately
       | common mistake even in custom keyboards
       | 
       | Also some keys in good central positions like sdf are surprising
       | empty, could reduce the overload of other keys by shifting some
       | symbols there
       | 
       | Wonder how convenient corner gestures are vs pure
       | horizontal/vertical
        
         | vitiral wrote:
         | Some of us don't use swipe, this is great for me
        
           | 1209412comb wrote:
           | I actually think swipe user is a minority ? I have never seen
           | a swipe user in my circle but given how much people talk
           | about it online, it must be quite popular in the US at least.
        
         | mouse_ wrote:
         | Swipe isn't a good fit for terminal input, which is the usecase
         | for this keyboard.
        
           | eviks wrote:
           | Why not? Swiping is less error prone, might need a different
           | dictionary, though, to better match common commands and other
           | patterns.
        
         | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
         | 150ms, not 500. Try it. Gboard already has this built in. Feels
         | very snappy if you do it this way. And you don't give up swipe
         | nor tapping.
        
         | tester457 wrote:
         | You can create your own keyboard layouts in this app.
        
         | BurnGpuBurn wrote:
         | There is a numpad, quite nice. Ctrl key to bottom right.
        
       | 1209412comb wrote:
       | This is similar to how Japanese use a 3x4 flick but the
       | difference is that 1 word is typically 3-6 syllables where Latin
       | is double the amount, also triple the amount of words per
       | sentence.
        
       | maguay wrote:
       | Sad that a keyboard even needs to say that it's "privacy-
       | conscious." What a world we've built, where one might reasonably
       | worry that their keyboard _isn't_ private.
        
         | enoeht wrote:
         | I never developed much trust in current smartphones where in
         | some countries the SIM can be a backdoor.
        
           | sandos wrote:
           | And the baseband everywhere?
        
         | rollcat wrote:
         | The standalone microcontroller in your physical keyboard can
         | run arbitrary code, and it's been able to since we've invented
         | keyboards attached to the computer via a port. What's there to
         | stop the manufacturer (or a sophisticated attacker) from:
         | 
         | - recording your keystrokes in non-volatile memory, to be
         | extracted later?
         | 
         | - exfiltrating them in real-time via Bluetooth (yay for
         | wireless peripherals), WiFi, LoRa?
         | 
         | - asking the OS to install a driver, which (even if
         | approved/signed) could have exploitable security holes?
         | 
         | The main hurdles are scale and sophistication, which, with an
         | all-software "keyboard", were no longer an issue.
        
           | wcrossbow wrote:
           | You can flash your own firmware which you can inspect. QMK
           | and ZMK are two very popular options.
        
             | dmd wrote:
             | By "very popular", you mean "as many as 0.0001% of people
             | worldwide use it", though.
        
               | wcrossbow wrote:
               | That's a gross underestimation. At current world
               | population levels that comes out to be 8000 people. The
               | QMK github repo alone has over 18k stars and almost 40k
               | forks. So yeah very popular!
        
               | dmd wrote:
               | Ok, so let's be very generous and say 0.002% :) Very
               | popular!
        
               | throwaway290 wrote:
               | now exclude world population who is not using computers
               | with separate keyboards in the first place. and maybe
               | everyone who would not bother with firmware. in that
               | context it's sorta popular. maybe even very.
        
           | blueflow wrote:
           | The same problem exists for the main processor as well. The
           | issue persists.
        
           | tweetle_beetle wrote:
           | Weren't (true) PS/2 keyboards exempt from all of that? Of
           | course someone could always achieve the first one with enough
           | effort, but it would be adding in lots of things from scratch
           | rather than repurposing the existing hardware that many
           | keyboards have now.
           | 
           | And PS/2 had a maximum draw of 100mA so even piggybacking on
           | that would be challenging I'd assume(?) - not an expert. A
           | Teensy which was benchmark for lots of custom keyboards can
           | pull most of that [1].
           | 
           | [1] https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/teensy-3-6-vs-4-
           | 0-m...
        
         | dan-robertson wrote:
         | See eg
         | https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/about/cryptologic-h...
        
       | cynicalsecurity wrote:
       | Nothing beats the privacy-oriented FUTO keyboard for me.
        
       | ivolimmen wrote:
       | I just installed it. And thus far: it makes sense. I need to get
       | used to this one. Weird thing is: I don't mis the autocorrect
       | other keyboards usually have.
        
       | rustcleaner wrote:
       | It's great, just _NEEDS_ one thing:
       | 
       | Configuration export/import.
        
       | adakbar wrote:
       | Thank you for posting, this is game changer, I have quite an old
       | phone and this keyboard help me use it less unbearable
        
       | hiked wrote:
       | I love the small keyboard
        
       | neves wrote:
       | Any keyboard with an undo button?
        
         | eimrine wrote:
         | Any ideas how to make it privacy-respecting? It should remember
         | everything to do that.
        
           | neves wrote:
           | it doesn't need to have infinite undo, just if I
           | inadvertently do a "select all" and touch a letter, it would
           | give my text back.
        
       | mosquitobiten wrote:
       | ThumbKey inspired Querty, that's cool I guess.
        
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       (page generated 2024-12-13 23:01 UTC)