I could not recommend AnySoftKeyboard to my mum. I could recommend Florisboard, tho.
Openboard is virtually dead from what I can see. So that leaves Florisboard as the only open source alternative (that I know of) that could really be used by the masses. And the world would actually be a way better place if we all opensource freaks could install Florisboard on our family/friends phones and them barely noticing anything weird.
The problem is… no word suggestions yet. It’s been years and we are still lacking what is almost an essential feature of a phone’s keyboard.
I wish I could really work on it, but I lack the knowledge to do so; so I hope I am bringing some attention to the project.
Is there any other alternative I am unaware of?
OpenBoard’s developing is being carried on by one of the original developers: https://github.com/Helium314/openboard
It allows to include an external swipe-type library (proprietary, from Gboard) in case you need it, and it works really well. The only problem is that currently it’s only available on github, so you can only update manually or with obtainium
How is swipe created
What do you mean?
They need to do way instain developer> who close thier swipp source. because these swyppe can’t frigth back?
The state of OSS keyboards is lamentable - no shade to devs, because most projects seem largely abandoned, except for Thumb-Key, which is exciting, active… and mostly not my bag. 8VIM is a fun version of this, but again, I’m mostly a two-thumber, so these slow me down.
Floris is almost there, except there’s little development activity, and the lack of autocorrect keeps me from using it most of the time. The clipboard is great, and the alt-key keyset is fantastic (it includes interrobang!). But the swipe is decent, and it has a 9-pad number entry which - although it can sadly not be made the default - should be mandatory.
AnySoft has some serious stability bugs that keep me from using it.
So I use OpenBoard most of the time, because its autocorrect works pretty well. It has no swiping. It has no 9-key number entry. It has no interrobang. While I like the multiple-choice paste history, most of the time the multi-step paste is just more work.
Gboard has all of these, but it comes from Google.
Keyboard development mist just be unfun; I agree with you: it’s a sad state of affairs.
There’s a fork of openboard that you can add the DLL for google swipe typing to. I’m currently using it and the swipe works as well as gboard
There is a fork of openboard with swiping at https://github.com/Helium314/openboard
Edit: you technically need to download the swiping library to keep it fully FOSS, but I am okay with that given there is no other alternative. Instructions on where to find a swiping binary are on the github
Edit edit: another fork of openboard with swiping here, but is less up to date https://github.com/erkserkserks/openboard
How do you enable swipe after loading the library?
Sweet, thanks! It’ll be interesting to see how safe it is, vis-à-vis the swipe library talking to the mother ship.
AnySoft is still testing because of all the functionality it has, which is massive compared to other keyboarda. I moved to a fork of OpenBoard, but I recognize all the effort put in both AnySoft and FlorisBoard
‽
Do I understand you correctly that Floris had swipe typing? Cause I tried the OpenBoard fork that has it, and it was horrible. It technically worked, sometimes, but most often was even slower than hitting individual letters. Usually I have to correct maybe 1 word out of 20 or so with GBoard, and even then what I want is one of the suggestions 95% of the time. with the OpenBoard fork, 3 out of 5 words were wrong and the correct one was suggested like 2 out of 5 times.
If its swipe is usable, I might give Floris a go…
edit: ah, English only. Not gonna work for me. I also prefer to have multiple languages active and being able to swipe in any/all of them. guess I’m stuck with GBoard…
Yeah, the swipe on Floris is pretty excellent; it’s too bad about the English-only thing.
Try out the two handed mode on thumbkey, it works great as a fellow two thumber
I… totally missed that option. Thanks!
Is this normal? It looks messed up, and I’m not sure how to fix it. If I make the font tiny enough, both sides fit, but it’s useless. I’d expect half the letters to be on one side, the other half on the other… no?
This is how it looks for me, I didn’t get a screenshot in your comment.
You’ll probably need to fiddle with the look and feel > key size because it’s set by default for a one-handed experience
Yah, I deleted it because (a) I forgot to link a screenshot, and (b) I fiddled with the font sizes for a while and got it to fit. It’s a bit too small for comfort, for me. I’d rather have it split (deduplicated) and be able to make the keys larger, which seems important when slight swipe angle changes mean the difference between two characters.
Thanks for letting me know about that, tho!
There is a fork of OpenBoard which is pretty active the repo is on github. It release an update a day ago
This doesn’t have word-prediction, but I develop !thumbkey@lemmy.ml as one of my side projects.
Just tried it out. It’s a really cool app for casual messaging. I’m not sure if I can use it on something like Termux, but it’s a cool option to have.
There are some programmer layouts, but it has some issues on termux atm.
how long does it take to get fluid with it? This is my 5th day and it’s still a bit difficult for me
Took me like a week or so to get up to 40wpm. I’d recommend making the key sizes larger if you’re having trouble remembering.
cheers, will keep at it
This is fantastic! Written on thumb split
Thx!
Definitely one of the biggest things keeping me from switching from gboard to an open source keyboard is that I use my keyboard for not just English, but Japanese (12 key and handwriting recognition), Chinese (both simp. and trad. pinyin and handwriting recognition), Korean, and French and I have yet to find an open source keyboard that has all of those wrapped under a single keyboard.
Man I just want an open source keyboard where changing language settings ISN’T a single key next to the spacebar.
I hate starting a perfectly legible sentence in one language and then suddenly getting weird completions in another, just because I fat-thumbed the spacebar too much to the left.
That would also be amazing. There have been plenty of times I wanted to hit an apostrophe or z, x, or c and accidentally switched to another language. It’s annoying.
Mr international. I only need hungarian, english, swedish and spanish and all of them work with the basic layout so im lucky.
My man heard of CJK input methods and thought they were a study guide. Then threw in English and French to confuse the enemy. Props to you dude! That said, you’re a walking i18n nightmare.
I’m definitely one of those people who can barely speak, read, write any CJK or French, but I at least still use them from time to time. Especially as a vocaloid fan (for CJK).
I’ve never thought about that If a language has characters the handwriting is a really big deal Also, there are many apps that do different similar tasks, but not all at once
Also: have you ever tried foss keyboards, let’s say, for simplified or traditional Chinese? Is the suggestion feature working well?
Dragon/Nuance abandoned Swype keyboard. All I want for Christmas is that they open source Swype.
I use OpenBoard and never had any issue.
I’ve been using “Unexpected Keyboard” for quite a while and very happy with it!
Yeah but no
It’s in F-Droid too.
I’ve been using it since like 6 months. It’s great, though I would love autocorrect.
Aosp keyboard is crap but has word suggestions. So this should totally be possible.
Agree 100%, florisboard is the best.
Its insane, you can use whatever messenger or browser you want if you literally have a keylogger in front of that
This! I use it since 2021 and even tho it miss critical feature I just want to support the project! If people can donate or create code for it please go ahead!
I’ve been using florisboard for a few months now. You will have typos. Auto-correct for obvious things would be nice… once you install a dictionary its not awful, but the dictionary struggles with simple typos since it isnt usually taking rhe surrounding words into context of the misspelled word. I think the only dictionary i could get installed was from libreoffice? So could just be a lack of common mobile typos in the dataset.
Florisboard does support things i actually used from gboard like a function row up top with undo/redo, activating voice options, and a clipboard with history. It also supports things like apps that support the autofill hints similarly to how itd pop up on gboard. Of all the foss options, it was the only one that had these modern expectations, so i also think its the best bet for a gboard alternative people will actually switch to. Anysoft and openboard are way too minimal (not a bad thing, just not what an avid gboard user is looking for)
Swipe on floris is ok. It definitely triggers when you don’t want it on occasion. And the lack of autocorrect makes recovery miserable.
I tried openboard too, but i could not get openboard to a reasonable size on the screen. Pixel 7 pro is fairly big… and i use the smallest text scaling… but even the smallest layout options put the top row out of reach of my thumbs.
Florisboard is quite great if you only input English. I can theme it with catppuccin,which is a feature I am looking for. However,I hope that it supports fcitx5 input method (specifically fcitx5-chewing). Otherwise,it is unusable for me and I will need to use Gboard.
Its great for German too and even has stuff like Arab and french, I have a Tunesian 4-lingual friend that uses it afaik
There was word suggestions I believe, but they pulled it back to rebuild the app, and went missing until recently
oh I though it was for a HW keyboard
