Well, it’s interesting, but who is heavily working with text, which requires a lot of typing, and only has a smartphone? Phones are mostly for consuming. For creating, it’s usually easier and more comfortable to use a device with a keyboard (PC or laptop)
Compare 1996's "FITALY":<p><i>"For the FITALY layout, we have obtained an average travel of 1.8, to be compared to an average travel of 3.2 for the QWERTY layout. (For prose, involving few numbers and symbols, the results are even better.)"</i><p><a href="https://www.textware.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.textware.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm</a><p><a href="https://the-gadgeteer.com/1998/08/22/fitaly_review/" rel="nofollow">https://the-gadgeteer.com/1998/08/22/fitaly_review/</a><p>And closer to OP, "HexInput":<p><i>"Please use this idea! If you are a software developer, I urge you to consider adding this functionality to your product. My hope is that ten years from now, we won't have to laboriously tap out messages letter by letter, but instead will be able to zip them out quickly and efficiently with something like HexInput."</i> -Sept2006<p><a href="https://www.strout.net/info/ideas/hexinput.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.strout.net/info/ideas/hexinput.html</a><p>1996, 2006, 2026... Your turn?
There were a _lot_ of programs in this space, one of the more interesting was AlphaTap! by Network Improv:<p><a href="http://networkimprov.net/alphatap/light.html" rel="nofollow">http://networkimprov.net/alphatap/light.html</a><p>c.f., the research project:<p><a href="https://dasher.zone/docs/getting-started/how-to/" rel="nofollow">https://dasher.zone/docs/getting-started/how-to/</a><p>For my part, I just write text out using a Wacom stylus on my Note 10+
We did a lot of experimentation with keyboards in Android - finding better ways to type and click is pure HCI dream work<p>The key challenge is:<p>- At first, people don't care about speed - they just want to type well and accurately - for most people, that means standardised layout across all their devices, and they won't consider phones that push them into other models.<p>- Only after they've mastered that standard layout do they start to care about speed, but by then they've gotten good enough at the basic system that swapping to anything else is too much of a regression<p>So I really do love the existence of third party keyboards that cater to the set of people that are willing to deal with that setback
Percentage bars do not seem to work (FF Mobile), or your conclusion must be that the distance is exactly equal
Not on a phone right now, but you have to type in sample text above and press check. Bad UI choice of showing bars before text has been entered and separating bars from the input field by additional text.
Same on android chrome, bars are the same height and there're no numbers next to the units.
No swyping and no autocorrect make it DOA
I think the key to smartphone keyboards is something like Nintype, two-finger swiping. It's incredibly fast and doesn't require you to learn a completely new keyboard layout to succeed.<p>It's also a lot more comfortable for one-hand typing since you can do multiple swipes per word.<p>Funny that looking at their "number of touches" and "distance covered" checker, I've tried a few words and thinking in my head how it'd be in Nintype and it would score far better than Keybee.<p>Unfortunately I haven't seen anyone since Nintype (and the older Keymonk) to give it an attempt.
I wonder what got them kicked from iOS. Alt keyboards in the app store definitely do exist...
Very cool. The biggest questions someone skimming would likely be why the letters are in this order, and how this is consumed (eg ios app?). You may answer those details but they were not front and center to me.
This is gonna be like Dvorak where eventually we all figure out that it’s not significantly faster and you had to re-learn how to type just to figure that out.<p>I submit the idea that for most smartphone users, distance traveled and layout are not the limiting factor for typing speed.
Nice, but physical keyboards are making a comeback.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114412">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114412</a>
Looking at the English keyboard and the English digraphs, it doesn't seem like the coverage is that well optimized. We are currently capturing 8.65% of the digraph weight, but just getting the top-5 would account for 5% by itself.<p>I also feel like distance travelled is the wrong (or an incomplete) metric. Change in direction seems like a good proxy for mental or physical effort. To take it to an extreme, I'd be very satisfied with a keyboard that had me move my thumb in a circle as on the original iPod, provided it just read my mind and inputted the right text. That's extreme distance but little effort.<p><a href="https://pi.math.cornell.edu/%7Emec/2003-2004/cryptography/subs/digraphs.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://pi.math.cornell.edu/%7Emec/2003-2004/cryptography/su...</a><p>See also: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewise" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewise</a><p><pre><code> +---------+---------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+
| Digraph | Frequency (%) | Adjacent? | Pair on Keyboard |
+---------+---------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+
| TH | 1.52 | Yes | T is right of H |
| HE | 1.28 | No | Separated by O and [Space] |
| IN | 0.94 | Yes | I is top-left of N |
| ER | 0.94 | Yes | E is below R |
| AN | 0.82 | No | A is bottom-center; N is top-right |
| RE | 0.68 | Yes | R is above E |
| ND | 0.63 | No | N is top-right; D is bottom-right |
| AT | 0.59 | No | Separated by [Space] and S |
| ON | 0.57 | No | Separated by H and T |
| NT | 0.56 | Yes | N is top-right of T |
| HA | 0.56 | No | Separated by [Space] |
| ES | 0.56 | No | Separated by [Space] |
| ST | 0.55 | Yes | S is below T |
| EN | 0.55 | No | N/E are on opposite sides |
| ED | 0.53 | No | E is center-left; D is bottom-right |
| TO | 0.52 | No | Separated by H |
| IT | 0.50 | Yes | I is above T |
| OU | 0.50 | Yes | O is below U |
| EA | 0.47 | Yes | E is top-left of A |
| HI | 0.46 | Yes | H is below-left of I |
| IS | 0.46 | No | Separated by T |
| OR | 0.43 | Yes | O is below R |
| TI | 0.34 | Yes | T is below I |
| AS | 0.33 | Yes | A is below-left of S |
| TE | 0.27 | No | Separated by H and [Space] |
| ET | 0.19 | No | Separated by H and [Space] |
| NG | 0.18 | Yes | N is above G |
| OF | 0.16 | Yes | O is below F |
| AL | 0.09 | Yes | A is right of L |
| DE | 0.09 | No | E/D are distant |
+---------+---------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+</code></pre>
It's interesting but I wish I could still Swype on it
For me, as a two thumb typer, I feel like if you had kept the letters generally on the same <i>side</i> (left/right) as Qwerty, even if nowhere near the same location, I could adapt to it much more quickly.<p>I go to spell something as simple as my name on this and none of the keys are anywhere near where 40 years of muscle memory expect.<p>Frankly, I just want to hit the letters with the same thumb.<p>I understand not wanting to copy, to be a purely original creation, but you could certainly help adoption by making it a little less painful.
"Like a Blackberry," I red the headline and thought. Then I looked and thought, "I'm old."
If Steve Jobs when he introduced iphone, added this keyboard and said this is how we should write, everybody would do it.<p>Just sayin'...