Optimising swipe keyboards

[Kalium_Puceon]

(I don't know if this is the right board but move it if it's not.)

I was thinking about the way that Unicity Distance applies to swipe keyboards in that longer words are much easier to recognise on a swipe interface, so I did some Googling.

I found this blog post and associated paper on the topic. The blog post is nice because it has animations and the like. The idea was to optimise the keyboard that swipe input uses, because anyone who has used one knows that grouping half the vowels in one corner of the keyboard makes for lots of mistakes.

In summary, they used a long wordlist to generate the input (presses for T9 and vectors for Swipe) you would give to both T9 and Swipe keyboards, then fed those inputs back into a simulated keyboard to see how many errors they got. Then they changed the layout of the keyboard and tried again, eventually settling on an ideal-ish swipe layout and an optimal T9 layout.

Does anyone know of any Android swipe keyboards that would let you manually map the keys, so I can try out this layout?

UPDATE: I found this keyboard for Android, which sounds promising. Time to break my brain with a whole new layout!

[Xanthir]

Oooh, I skipped over that one when I went searching yesterday, because it didn't immediately look like it was what I wanted. Unfortunately the only other one I could find had shady permissions requests (Contacts, really? Really?), so I didn't install anything.

Thanks for letting me know about this research, it's really cool. Gonna have to try retraining myself to the DGHPAS keyboard. ^_^

[Kalium_Puceon]

Yeah, I just need to take some time to get rid of the number line on this keyboard (because number lines on mobile keyboards take up waay too much screen space) and It'll be great. In the meantime, here's the keyboard layout code I used to make mine work nicely, so you won't have to make your own:

Code: Select all

OK_Layout_Begin
1234567890
dghpasjrkn
iqvuwclxm
tybezfo
!@#$%^&*()
DGHPASJRKN
IQVUWCLXM
TYBEZFO
£¥€$%^&*()№√⁙
~`{}÷_-=|+§∷‡
@[]#/\'"«»—‐–
…<>!;:?‹›±.,
ˉ`ˇ´¨˙˚¸﹐˛˘˜ˆ
―∑éə®†Ωœøπ•·¡
æß∂ðƒ©ªº∆≠℥∞¿
ʒΩ≈çþ∫ŋµ≤≥°
OK_Layout_End

So you just have to go into Layouts and shove this into one of the DIY layouts. It'll fill in nicely.

I kind of get the feeling that this keyboard app is the C3P0 of keyboards: Someone built it to be robust and versatile and because they needed it, so even though it's kind of weird it's also going to work no matter what you throw at it. I have no idea how they managed to get some of the stuff to work, like I can't see it downloading anything from the options website but it can change themes via links on the page. Something witchraft-y if you ask me.

[Mikemk]

Yeah, I just need to take some time to get rid of the number line on this keyboard (because number lines on mobile keyboards take up waay too much screen space) and It'll be great. In the meantime, here's the keyboard layout code I used to make mine work nicely, so you won't have to make your own:

Code: Select all

OK_Layout_Begin
1234567890
dghpasjrkn
iqvuwclxm
tybezfo
!@#$%^&*()
DGHPASJRKN
IQVUWCLXM
TYBEZFO
£¥€$%^&*()№√⁙
~`{}÷_-=|+§∷‡
@[]#/\'"«»—‐–
…<>!;:?‹›±.,
ˉ`ˇ´¨˙˚¸﹐˛˘˜ˆ
―∑éə®†Ωœøπ•·¡
æß∂ðƒ©ªº∆≠℥∞¿
ʒΩ≈çþ∫ŋµ≤≥°
OK_Layout_End

So you just have to go into Layouts and shove this into one of the DIY layouts. It'll fill in nicely.

I kind of get the feeling that this keyboard app is the C3P0 of keyboards: Someone built it to be robust and versatile and because they needed it, so even though it's kind of weird it's also going to work no matter what you throw at it. I have no idea how they managed to get some of the stuff to work, like I can't see it downloading anything from the options website but it can change themes via links on the page. Something witchraft-y if you ask me.

This doesn't work for landscape mode

[Kalium_Puceon]

Yeah, I just need to take some time to get rid of the number line on this keyboard (because number lines on mobile keyboards take up waay too much screen space) and It'll be great. In the meantime, here's the keyboard layout code I used to make mine work nicely, so you won't have to make your own:

Code: Select all

OK_Layout_Begin
1234567890
dghpasjrkn
iqvuwclxm
tybezfo
!@#$%^&*()
DGHPASJRKN
IQVUWCLXM
TYBEZFO
£¥€$%^&*()№√⁙
~`{}÷_-=|+§∷‡
@[]#/\'"«»—‐–
…<>!;:?‹›±.,
ˉ`ˇ´¨˙˚¸﹐˛˘˜ˆ
―∑éə®†Ωœøπ•·¡
æß∂ðƒ©ªº∆≠℥∞¿
ʒΩ≈çþ∫ŋµ≤≥°
OK_Layout_End

So you just have to go into Layouts and shove this into one of the DIY layouts. It'll fill in nicely.

I kind of get the feeling that this keyboard app is the C3P0 of keyboards: Someone built it to be robust and versatile and because they needed it, so even though it's kind of weird it's also going to work no matter what you throw at it. I have no idea how they managed to get some of the stuff to work, like I can't see it downloading anything from the options website but it can change themes via links on the page. Something witchraft-y if you ask me.

This doesn't work for landscape mode

Huh, I never used my keyboard landscape because it'd use up too much screen. I'll have a look and see how to organise it for landscape.