Replies: 8 comments 65 replies
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Looking more at this thing, it'll definitely just have a secondary page to handle selection expansion/retraction. |
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This is nice if you can pull it off however, ten years of using multiling just for the edit pad and everything being the same size hasn't been much of a big deal. 🤷🏼♂️
That's more of an issue — with Gboard I'm always transitioning because it lacks the functional keys, and access to quick punctuation. Those are all good ideas. One thing I would suggest is using double tap & long press to double up functions — paste, copy, and cut could all be one icon. Though those can also be in the toolbar 🤔 |
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You raise a good point about the toolbar! It's never good to have double-ups (subtweeting the comma and return popups rn ;) My hope is that this layout clears up a lot of space in folks' pin-toolbars, making room for the suggestion strip. It will not have a dedicated toolbar to minimize settings-creep and maintenance headaches, although I think a "selection toolbar" would be cool.
All in all, full user control of keys & their locations is the MVP here. If somebody wants a key in a specific place, they can put it there and disable it elsewhere (with enough work). |
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Always a good thing! That's one reason multiling keyboard is so useful even if it's not the best for typing. I wish you luck!!! Text editing & manipulation is a big deal for me personally and most keyboards lack it. |
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Here's my latest design sketch. Drawing is my passion.
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You know, the single, double tap could work for gestures if you just duplicate the double tap as a pop-up. 🤦🏻♂️ |
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Might already be possible with the current pop-up customization repertoire. |
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There is a feature that the D-pad would greatly benefit from IMO, though not part of the D-pad directly. Return to last used layout. When you switch apps (or minimize the keyboard) the keyboard opens to the main layout — very annoying when you are working with something like editing a layout and you are using the D-pad to select text then want to paste and continue editing in a text editor, or have to minimize the keyboard for whatever reason. Multiling Keyboard used to have this feature in the original app. It was great! |
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There actually is a D-pad bug rn where arrowing into a new text field resets the keyboard layout. I plan on fixing this. However, I don't plan on modifying the keyboard's behavior for full resets (i.e. it's closed and reopened), which is to open the default layout for that field. This is important for consistent behavior throughout the Android ecosystem and sufficiently hinting what kind of text field has been activated. Unfortunately, I don't think we can fix the fact that the Android system closes any soft keyboard when a window regains focus. That's an actual issue that's really annoying, and seems to be a fundamental design flaw in the window manager FTTB. (and they still think all those animations are a good idea 🙄) |
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It might be possible to keep the keyboard open by doing nothing on |
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D-pad gestures are mostly working now. They aren't the default, but you can choose them in the advanced preferences for the space bar.
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Just had a thought — can you gesture from the D-pad key if it is put into the main layout? I've been racking my brain to find a way for quick access gesture to the D-pad that doesn't interfere with other gesture — the only function keys to possibly gesture from are the emoji key, D-pad, language, and space though space bar has lots of other gestures already possible for it, getting crowded. Actually the return key has no gesture tied to it 🤔 |
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Yes, you can gesture from the D-pad key starting in the gesture build. I'm still ironing out some of the kinks, like making sure that it doesn't activate any keys beneath it when you single-tap (layout-peek gestures change to the new layout immediately as the key is tapped, rather than when it's released). But it will be available once it's finished. |
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Circling back on a couple things. I do find the idea of a return key dpad-slide quite interesting. For one, easier access of that word-del key by default. For two, 'return' is kinda navigational in nature, so letting it have the d-pad gesture sorta makes intuitive sense. It would also symmetrify the slide-gesture situation, which is kinda cute 🙃 Also, if I didn't say this already, I have encountered that word-left/right issue that you described some time back where it doesn't play nice with punctuations. This is a deviation from what the behavior should be, and I'm working on diagnosing the problem and hope to fix it. |
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The whole gesture thing takes a minute to really get used to — I've used Multiling O Keyboard for over ten years, mainly just for the edit pad, but never really used the keyboard in full till recently — everything about the keyboard is designed to be fast access via gesture. So I've tried getting used to doing that — it uses the delete key — very similar in feel to using the enter key. Doing certain things via the quick gesture makes sense especially cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, and select all. However I'm also able to make all those functions pop-ups under their normal PC letter 🤷🏼♂️😂😂 but I don't know if you can do that with function keys on HeliBoard — I'm not bothering to figure out the "complicated" layout modification for HeliBoard as I've basically given up on HeliBoard for typing, using Gboard, and I think not making the functional keys part of the simple layout method is bad & unnecessarily complicated, and Multiling O Keyboard is much easier to modify for functional layouts 🤷🏼♂️ well, all layouts & keys. So... IMO, the quick gesture does what you want — helps eliminate a bunch of keys from the toolbar as they can be quickly accessed via gesture to the D-pad, but the movement keys aren't so helpful via quick gesture, activating long press repeat or not. As a side note: with the new layout system couldn't the toolbar be gutted and made into just another layout? On Multiling O Keyboard it's all essentially the same just a specialized formatting for that particular area 🤔 What it all really comes down to is the internal programming for the keys, and everything else is just an arrangement of those keys that the user can easily arrange. |
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At last, here's a build with the gestures "finished": |
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Sounds good! |
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I assumed it to be the case, but just to make sure, you do plan on having the D-pad key as an option on the main layout? |
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Oh like in app settings? Yeah probably. I'll have to figure out where all to put it—long-presses, etc. Cleaning up the comma and return pop-ups would be a feature request on its own. You can already add it to the function keys rows via JSON. |
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Yes, like showing the emoji key. Average users are never going to figure out anything beyond the basic method of modifying layouts — their heads will explode looking at the function keys and their code. |
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Yeah sure, it'll be figured out. Though by default, I think I plan on treating it the same as the numpad key in terms of placement. And I think a toolbar button too. That'd probably be it. |
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At this point I'm curious what you think of the design and functionality of this thing. Feel free to take a peek if you find the time, here's a link to the current dev build. You can also let me know if you'd prefer me to share these builds in a different manner. So far I've added this d-pad layout, which can be accessed via switcher key or optional space-bar gesture. This the default layout, currently: This includes quite a few new keys. Previously reserved:
Brand new:
I plan on adding:
That's quite a lot of stuff, so apologies in advance for the review process if you do decide to merge this into the main project 🙃 |
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Ideally I would like the souce code, so I can build it myself. Could you just push it to some branch on your repository? I actually can't comment much on the layout / functionality, as I haven't really used such an editing layout (only ever played / tested a bit). On the functionality, I would prefer if you could split it up into smaller chunks as far as it's possible / makes sense. |
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Alright! I'll go ahead and do those things. |
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@devycarol @Helium314 It reminded me of when I implemented the Numpad button 😅 I can't wait for this feature to be available in a future release! 😉 |
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@devycarol the concept looks good so far. Basically all selection does is pretty display for modifier keys (CTRL+V/C/Z/Y, PgUP, PgDown, Home, End, Ins etc.). Want to share the most functional (not the most visually appealing) but little known D-pad layout of Technical Keyboard
All other D-pads are entirely skipping the not so common modifiers or are cramming them in a bad way like what Unexpected Keyboard does. Maybe what will make the most sense to not clutter the D-pad for most users is to hide Ctrl, Shift, Alt, Fn 1-12 behind another key layer or in the same one but shown only on button press, and in the current one include Escape, Tab, Shift (for selection) Speaking of Tab this is so convenient:
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Interesting. I see 'tab' as sort of a conceptual limbo between 'space' and 'return'. I think it would make sense as a long-click for either of those keys. I'm amused by the mere inclusion of some of those keys, like what apps use function keys 😅 I don't plan on including modifier keys like Ctrl in the D-pad by default, since it's probably rather unclear to the general userbase what those keys would do in a phone. But the do exist in code and are able to be used. |
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Good idea
Terminal emulator applications (Termux...), ssh clients, remote desktop (VNC, RDP....), remote control (KDE Connect...) etc. Its more technical usecases but all those keys are extensively used there
I agree that for non-technical people it will be unclear and good to be hidden by default but still be able to expose them with an option. Given the FOSS nature of HeliBoard its way more likely for the |
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Terminal emulators are really something. Making sure the D-pad works with them properly is important (one of the more dominant use cases), but it's really tricky to balance improving functionality with "rich input" stuff while still maintaining compatibility (i.e. 1:1 behavior as a physical keyboard) with those more primitive input fields. |
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Well it's pretty insane, but the prototype for this thing is pretty darn close to complete. Here's a new build: What's new:
Now it's time to just start cherry-picking changes and making PR's. Polish will come in tow. Wish me luck :). |
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This build is somewhat buggy. |
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... You've mostly mentioned things that I've already addressed before, either as bugs, design, or the 'incompletes' up above. The "exit layout" key has been replaced with the dpad toggle key. It takes you to the previous layout. I imagine not being able to key-slide to the d-pad is related to the bug where you can't key-slide to the clipboard layout. I'll make a note of this. Are you aware that the horizontal space gesture for the D-pad is a toggle? It keeps you in the layout. The pagers have a knack for misbehaving in all manner of circumstances (I temporarily added them to the start/end popups and forgot to remove them.) Please don't expect the keys to behave perfectly. This is alpha. |
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Better to be redundant than miss something, no? Or should I start a running list just to make sure I don't repeat something? 😂
When trapped. If you gesture it shows symbol layout, used to be main layout.
It's different than it was before. The space bar used to break the gesture, it doesn't anymore, but it also doesn't activate the D-pad key even if you avoid the space bar, as it used to. I'm not sure what you mean about the clip board in relation to this.
No, I wasn't. And you mean swipe to the enter key to lock in layout? That's the only thing I've found.
Interesting. They were perfect in the last build.
I'm not. Just trying to give you as much useful feedback as possible. Or would you like me to just say, GREAT JOB! Looks amazing! 🤷🏼♂️ |
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D-pad
Gboard has an "arrow keys" keyboard. Here's a proof of concept that I've cobbled together for this app:
Some of these keys are obviously still WIP.
In what I'm imagining, you'd be able to set the spacebar vertical swipe to this layout. That central 'select' button could serve as a trackpad when it's dragged. It also selects all text when it's long-pressed.
I wonder if keyboard cursor adjustment could be made precise with a virtual mouse pointer, sort of like iOS's spacebar trackpad? That may or may not require an accessibility service (I mean it's already an input method so who knows).
The key to switch to this layout looks like this:
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