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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?
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
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...
This doesn't have word-prediction, but I develop [email protected] 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.
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.
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).
Mr international. I only need hungarian, english, swedish and spanish and all of them work with the basic layout so im lucky.
There is a fork of OpenBoard which is pretty active the repo is on github. It release an update a day ago
Why wouldn't you recommend AnySoftKeyboard?
I have used it for a few years. You have a ton of good setups, good language support with decent autocorrect. The only thing that is less intuitive is swiping to change keyboards and the emoji selection menu.
I guess the lack of a clipboard has burned me recently too (locked out of bitwarden because 2FA password was stored in bitwarden and the fingerprint scanner didn't work because I added a fingerprint)
wait, how does a supposed lack of clipboard (which ASK does support) cause you to lock you out of a password manager?
No I do not store critical passwords in my clipboard like the other poster suggested.
It was bad timing and stupidity on my part. A bit complicated. Story here:
I updated my Bitwarden encryption settings, so it kicked me out of every instance I had, which stored my password for my 2FA. Normally this is no problem because aegis has biometrics. I had added a fingerprint earlier in the day because mine wasn't working well, and didn't realize that it would shutdown fingerprint access to the app (and it sent no notification). I made a backup of the bitwarden database, but I chose account-locked encrypted because it was the suggestion.
I hadn't made a 2FA backup code for bitwarden yet because it doesn't prompt you to when setting up 2FA (at that point in time) like all other apps and I just completely forgot. Definitely fixed that now.
I had just used the password for Aegis earlier in the day because my fingerprint was being very unreliable (hence changing it later)
My server had a password backup, but I had moved a few months before and hadn't had time to set it all back up, and my harddrive encryption passwords were stored on bitwarden (backups on a paper I couldn't find)
Ergo, my clipboard would have saved me because I used my password like 5 copy actions earlier. I ended up getting access through a local app instance of bitwarden that hadn't received the encryption update while my computer was disconnected from the internet.
Stupid, but a clipboard would have saved me time and stress in that case. All od the stupid mistakes that culminated have been fixed now. Important lesson.
so you mean clipboard history. ASK has got that too, just hidden a little bit, you need to swipe up on the space bar and long press the paste button on the menu that pops up.
Learn something new everyday.. Thanks! This is sure to come in handy at some point.
Huh, had no idea, damn i will have to find that! Thanks!
They permanently store critical PWs in the clipboard? Hell no. Not even Florisboards internal one I would trust, even though assuring that is secure would be great
They permanently store critical PWs in the clipboard?
well, that sure would be an idiotic way of managing one's credentials.
Even on latest Android, every foreground app can read "your clipboard". That is the (like everything in Android) very basic 1-entry one. Florisboard is great if you preset the right stuff, as the internal clipboard can replace it (sync from system) but you can disable "sync to system"
Just make sure to always copy with the Keyboars and not the system popup, which UX-wise is absurd
Florisboard has many good features and is insanely customizable which are not present in AnySoftKeyboard. The only thing lacking as of now is the inferior swipe typing and word suggestions.
Not asking to start an argument but do you know what those features and customizability optons are?
Because I am currently running a German/English/Terminal-mode multi setup with everything set up right around how I need and the customization in AnySoft keyboard was quite honestly astounding to me (if very cumbersome to discover everything).
So if Floris offers even more possibilities I am wondering what they could even be?
I tried AnySoftKeyboard again as it's been a while since I used it and here are my thoughts.
FlorisBoard has a lot of small things that can make interacting with text easier. You can have a toolbar in addition to the number row which has buttons for copy, paste, select all, cut and paste. This eliminates the need for long pressing text to invoke these actions. There's a layout called "Quick Text Editing" in ASK but that disables the number row. This is quite a deal breaker.
It also has a clipboard manager which was missing in ASK.
You can add a secondary toolbar which has buttons for undo and redo. This is one of the most useful feature for me. It allows you to, well, undo and redo text basically everywhere. This is helpful since text input fields don't have a way to undo and redo text. It can be a lifesaver in many occasions.
Swiping left/right on the spacebar is faster and feels natural compared to ASK's one character movement per swipe. Swiping from one end of the spacebar to the other end moves the cursor by many number of letters depending on speed. On ASK swiping from one end to other moves the cursor by only one letter.
You can create custom themes on FlorisBoard locally by editing a few variables. This is not a huge thing but it might be useful.
In FlorisBoard long pressing letters inserts symbols instead of variations of the letter.
Of course most of these are small and won't concern most people, but these are good quality of life additions for me.
I see, that makes sense and is very interesting. I will remember this for some inevitable phase of going from never touch running system to ohh shiny down the road. While I suppose some of these are just things working differently on the two boards, I see your points.
Although I did learn in this thread that ASK also has a clipboard history and undo! Though - to be frank it is hidden under an up-swipe of the spacebar.
What features does it have that aren't present in AnySoftKeyboard?
By word suggestions do you mean autocorrect? That is really a dealbreaker for me with touchscreen keyboards and switching languages 😅
Trying it out now though.
Is there some way to get rid of the massive utility row? Or customize long press length? Or have only punctuatiom symbols on the period and numbers in the qwerty row? Doesn't work for the dutch keyboard for some reason.
What features does it have that aren't present in AnySoftKeyboard?
I wrote a long reply to another comment in this thread. You can check it.
By word suggestions do you mean autocorrect?
Word suggestions when you type a few letters. But yes it's autocorrect is severely lacking.
Is there some way to get rid of the massive utility row?
I believe it's called "smart bar". It can be disabled.
Or customize long press length?
Yes
Or have only punctuatiom symbols on the period and numbers in the qwerty row?
I don't know about this.
It crashes on me.
All. The. Time.
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.
I use OpenBoard and never had any issue.
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!
Dragon/Nuance abandoned Swype keyboard. All I want for Christmas is that they open source Swype.
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
oh I though it was for a HW keyboard
for now, I've landed on a fork of openboard in combination with sayboard for voice to text functionality. I'm excited to see what's to come for this project, as well as other similar ones. Always looking for the next best thing.
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
It's not open source at all. But I wanted to mention I find yandex board to be much better than gboard. Swipe works well, speech to text is reliable (unlike gboard for me), and it has a nice long clipboard history.
What do you mean it's not open source? FlorisBoard is Apache licensed, which to my understanding is is fairly permissive even for OSL.
not-so-fun-fact: since this post it seems no new contributions occured.