Well I couldn't wait til my next lunch hour to work on this, so when I got home I did a little search and found an open source project called
softkeyboard which is a really nice soft keyboard with multi-language support and lots of great functionality including the predictive text function and user defined dictionary support I was looking for. Since it's quite a bit more complicated than Google's little sample keyboard it took me a bit to figure out how to get my FITALY layout integrated into it but I got it going in about an hour (while watching 24). Here it is running on my Nexus One:
Yea, I was pretty proud of my first hack of an Android app. But now that I got it on my phone how's it work? Well, to be honest, not as great as I thought it'd be. First, as you can see, the 6 row format takes quite a bit of screen real estate and the keys are already too small to 'thumbtype' like I wanted so making them any smaller is out. I'll give it a try for a week and see how I like it.
3 comments:
So, how did the Fitaly KB on your Nexus One go?
So I've been working with it for about a week now and I've found a key size that is a good compromise between screen real estate and accuracy. My speeds at single thumb typing are increasing with use. Surprisingly the predictive text still works for this layout - I thought since mistyped keys on a QWERTY would land on different keys that the suggested words wouldn't make sense, but they seem fine for now.
I still think the best keyboard for Android are the ones with SWYPE algorithms that use shape recognition to detect the words you 'draw' without lifting your finger off the keyboard. They are really amazing in that you don't even need to be that accurate and hit all the right keys but results are what you intended. I swear they have some mind reading algorithm in there somewhere. But the one thing I can't do with SWYPE is use it one handed - my thumb isn't dexterous enough to draw those shapes - and thats where FITALY seems to work better.
My final task is to integrate voice recognition into the keyboard for times when I can't / shouldn't be looking at the keyboard.
For thumb use: I'm wondering if you would have to modify the fitaly keyboard. Fitaly is designed for single-finger use (holding the device in one hand, and operating the keyboard with the other.) The dynamics of using the thumb to type (on the same hand that is holding the device) will be completely different -- requiring, at a minimum, a new layout.
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