Swipe letter keys in T9 mode to make them act like ABC mode

[jaglufc]

I read in another thread that you had managed to enable swiping for all keys.

Would the following be possible?

Allow swiping letter keys in T9 mode to get individual letters. This would avoid having to switch between T9 and ABC.

For example, the 5 key, You could swipe left for 'j', swipe up for 'k' or swipe right for 'l'.

You could even arrange the key labels in a diamond shape to make this more intuitive.

Perfect for typing words that are not in the dictionary.

[GOTBLZ]

I read in another thread that you had managed to enable swiping for all keys.

Would the following be possible?

Allow swiping letter keys in T9 mode to get individual letters. This would avoid having to switch between T9 and ABC.

For example, the 5 key, You could swipe left for 'j', swipe up for 'k' or swipe right for 'l'.

You could even arrange the key labels in a diamond shape to make this more intuitive.

Perfect for typing words that are not in the dictionary.

That's a different idea that I do think sounds like something good, however I feel as though it would be a monumental task to implement for the little difference it would make, I mean I have no issue tapping the input switcher T9->ABC then tapping each key the amount of times i need to get the letter I need. Oh, and what would you do in the cases of 7 - 'PQRS' and 9 - 'WXYZ'?

One thing I would like, is for the option in settings to turn off or on auto space, well especially for 1 letter selected suggestions. I set this up on my old keyboard and used it as an alternative to needing to switch input methods at times, cause I mean who would ever need spaces after one letter? (A and I are exceptions to this but you should never need to select them from the suggestions list as they should ALWAYS be the first highlighted suggestion) Who in the world wants to type something like "S U I H T O"

I have no idea how auto space was ever created for t9 keyboards yet the above was always overlooked...

[sspanak]

Allow swiping letter keys in T9 mode to get individual letters. This would avoid having to switch between T9 and ABC.

How would this work in languages other than English? For example, in Portuguese and French, there are 8 letters on the 2-key; In Greek, there are 7 letters on the 4-key; in Hindi there are between 7 and 12 letters per key, and so on... Also, how to visualize so many letters on one key? And how to determine the swipe directions, given there will be a variable number of letters?

One thing I would like, is for the option in settings to turn off or on auto space, well especially for 1 letter selected suggestions. I set this up on my old keyboard and used it as an alternative to needing to switch input methods at times, cause I mean who would ever need spaces after one letter? (A and I are exceptions to this but you should never need to select them from the suggestions list as they should ALWAYS be the first highlighted suggestion) Who in the world wants to type something like "S U I H T O"

You can turn off auto-space from Settings -> Keypad -> Predictive Mode, if you don't like it.

If you'd rather keep it on, to type new words like "SUIHTO", you have to use either ABC mode (where there is no automatic assistance at all), or use word filtering in Predictive mode.

For example:

1. Press 7, scroll to "S" using the the arrow keys around the suggestions, filter.
2. Press 8, scroll to "U", filter
3. Press 4, scroll to "I", filter
4. Press 4, scroll to "H". From this point, there are no words in the dictionary, and you don't even need to press Filter anymore. You can tell this, if you only see letter suggestions such as "...h", "...i", "...g". Otherwise, there will be longer words, too.
5. Press 8, scroll to "t"
6. Press 6, scroll to "o".

Alternatively, you can use the word "suit" as a base to type "suihto" quicker.

1. Type "suit"
2. Filter
3. Backspace to delete "t"
4. Press 4, then scroll to "h". Again, once you are here, there are no more words, so you don't need to press Filter after every letter.
5. Press 8, scroll to "t"
6. Press 6, scroll to "o".

Remember, you must use the arrow keys to scroll. Tapping a letter will immediately complete the word. It is equivalent to pressing OK. This mimics the behavior when using a hardware keypad, because after all, TT9 is primarily meant for devices with keypads/keyboards, while touchscreen support is secondary.

Final words: I hate swiping. It is difficult to handle in code, and it is not true old-school experience. On a real device, you can only press the keys, you can't swipe them.

[jaglufc]

Allow swiping letter keys in T9 mode to get individual letters. This would avoid having to switch between T9 and ABC.

How would this work in languages other than English? For example, in Portuguese and French, there are 8 letters on the 2-key; In Greek, there are 7 letters on the 4-key; in Hindi there are between 7 and 12 letters per key, and so on... Also, how to visualize so many letters on one key? And how to determine the swipe directions, given there will be a variable number of letters?

Hi again. Thank you for the response. To be honest, like a typical English speaker, I didn't even think about other languages. Sorry about that.

Fair enough, it sounds difficult to implement. I'm not a developer but I saw you say that you'd implemented swiping for all keys and though it might be fairly routine to implement it for this. I understand that the focus of this project is physical keyboards but it works so well for small touchscreens too!

Whilst I have your attention, the auto-capitalisation feature seems to lead to weird behaviour on typing test websites such as Monkeytype. If you have it turned on it leads to you getting the first letter of every word incorrect. Presumably because it capitalises all of the words. I expected it for the first word but not every word. Maybe a small bug or something? There are no issues with it turned off.

Once again, thank you for the work that you put into this. And thank you for the responses on here. If you ever want someone to test how a new feature works on a tiny touchscreen just let me know.

[sspanak]

Hi again. Thank you for the response. To be honest, like a typical English speaker, I didn't even think about other languages. Sorry about that.

Fair enough, it sounds difficult to implement. I'm not a developer but I saw you say that you'd implemented swiping for all keys and though it might be fairly routine to implement it for this. I understand that the focus of this project is physical keyboards but it works so well for small touchscreens too!

After having to deal with #333 today again, I honestly don't want to deal with swiping again. At least not in the near future. Either I am not doing it right, or it is very difficult to handle indeed.

Whilst I have your attention, the auto-capitalisation feature seems to lead to weird behaviour on typing test websites such as Monkeytype. If you have it turned on it leads to you getting the first letter of every word incorrect. Presumably because it capitalises all of the words. I expected it for the first word but not every word. Maybe a small bug or something? There are no issues with it turned off.

It isn't a bug. It's because of the way this website works. From what I see, for every word it creates a hidden text field where you type, or it reuses the same field, but clears the previous word, it doesn't matter. The point is, whenever TT9 detects it is at the beginning of a text field, it assumes you are starting to type a sentence. This is true in almost all cases, for example, when typing a message in some chat application, or when typing an email, or when typing notes somewhere. However, in this website capitalization makes no sense. Indeed, you should manually turn it off to be able to execute a test.

I can also double check if they send some extra hints about text formatting, but I doubt the browser will pass them through to my code. I can't promise anything.

Once again, thank you for the work that you put into this. And thank you for the responses on here. If you ever want someone to test how a new feature works on a tiny touchscreen just let me know.

No problem. I've decided to dedicate some of my time for the benefit of the humankind. Getting a good word in return is great!

As for testing, if you notice anything unusual, just create a bug here and I'll check it out. I do not plan new features besides improving the UI and maybe improving the hotkey configuration a bit.

[sspanak]

I investigated the problem with Monkeytype.com. It turned out I wasn't detecting some input fields correctly which caused TT9 to turn on Automatic Capitalization, when it is not needed. The upcoming version 44.0 will fix the problem and make Monkeytype and other typing tests usable.

I believe there is nothing else to do here and this issue can be closed. Correct me if I have missed something.