"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.)"
"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." -Sept2006
I wanted to install it to give it a try, but in the playstore I saw the application roughly translated is "susceptible to share my approximative location with other enterprises or organization".
I must ask, what could the reason(s) for a keyboard have access to a location ?
I’ve always thought about copying other useful apps that are clearly trying to collect data or make you pay for stupid IAP, and then publishing and maintaining it through donations. The apps would all be free in the various offical stores.
If one could swipe through the center without inserting a space, it would be incredible instead of perhaps only great... There was a PalmOS 5 keyboard like this named myKbd(1) based on some IBM research(2) which was quite fast to use. the atomik layout was quite quick to use.
We did a lot of experimentation with keyboards in Android - finding better ways to type and click is pure HCI dream work
The key challenge is:
- 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.
- 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
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
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.
The thing I dislike about smartphone keyboards is the amount of screen real estate they use. This keyboard seems to take more screen real estate rather than less.
Yeah, the example is pretty bad. This layout also seems to be hard so squash vertically without increasing the error rate a lot compared to a normal one. The error rate on smaller sizes is something a lot of novel touchscreen keyboards should probably have focused on instead.
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)
2) In my (wealthy, Boston area) suburb most high school students do all their work - including writing multi-page papers - entirely on their phone. They think laptops are for old people.
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.
It's also a lot more comfortable for one-hand typing since you can do multiple swipes per word.
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.
Unfortunately I haven't seen anyone since Nintype (and the older Keymonk) to give it an attempt.
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.
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.
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.
+---------+---------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+
| 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 |
+---------+---------------+-----------+-------------------------------------+
For me, as a two thumb typer, I feel like if you had kept the letters generally on the same side (left/right) as Qwerty, even if nowhere near the same location, I could adapt to it much more quickly.
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.
Frankly, I just want to hit the letters with the same thumb.
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.
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.
I submit the idea that for most smartphone users, distance traveled and layout are not the limiting factor for typing speed.
Compare 1996's "FITALY":
"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.)"
https://www.textware.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm
https://the-gadgeteer.com/1998/08/22/fitaly_review/
And closer to OP, "HexInput":
"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." -Sept2006
https://www.strout.net/info/ideas/hexinput.html
1996, 2006, 2026... Your turn?
There were a _lot_ of programs in this space, one of the more interesting was AlphaTap! by Network Improv:
http://networkimprov.net/alphatap/light.html
c.f., the research project:
https://dasher.zone/docs/getting-started/how-to/
For my part, I just write text out using a Wacom stylus on my Note 10+
>Type by zooming infinitely into a prediction model
Holy crap that's a trippy GIF
I wanted to install it to give it a try, but in the playstore I saw the application roughly translated is "susceptible to share my approximative location with other enterprises or organization".
I must ask, what could the reason(s) for a keyboard have access to a location ?
I’ve always thought about copying other useful apps that are clearly trying to collect data or make you pay for stupid IAP, and then publishing and maintaining it through donations. The apps would all be free in the various offical stores.
If one could swipe through the center without inserting a space, it would be incredible instead of perhaps only great... There was a PalmOS 5 keyboard like this named myKbd(1) based on some IBM research(2) which was quite fast to use. the atomik layout was quite quick to use.
(1): https://palmdb.net/app/mykbd
(2): https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327051HCI172&3_4 https://blakewatson.com/uploads/2023/07/Performance_Optimiza...
We did a lot of experimentation with keyboards in Android - finding better ways to type and click is pure HCI dream work
The key challenge is:
- 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.
- 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
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
> Keybee Keyboard increases more than double the keysize thanks to its hexagonal structure. No waste of pixels.
It may be efficient, but it's using more screen space; I'm not sure that's a win.
This reminds me of what I did for Rad Type: https://www.tyleo.com/projects/rad-type
I didn’t fully optimize for touch but it’s based on the same idea that you want more buttons equidistant from where your thumb centers.
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.
You need to fill in some example text in the text box above, and it will then compare.
I wonder what got them kicked from iOS. Alt keyboards in the app store definitely do exist...
The thing I dislike about smartphone keyboards is the amount of screen real estate they use. This keyboard seems to take more screen real estate rather than less.
Yeah, the example is pretty bad. This layout also seems to be hard so squash vertically without increasing the error rate a lot compared to a normal one. The error rate on smaller sizes is something a lot of novel touchscreen keyboards should probably have focused on instead.
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)
1) Like 80% of the world is smartphone-only
2) In my (wealthy, Boston area) suburb most high school students do all their work - including writing multi-page papers - entirely on their phone. They think laptops are for old people.
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.
It's also a lot more comfortable for one-hand typing since you can do multiple swipes per word.
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.
Unfortunately I haven't seen anyone since Nintype (and the older Keymonk) to give it an attempt.
Heliboard does two finger swipe! Not as well as nintype but very passable! https://f-droid.org/packages/helium314.keyboard/
Will you get this up on f-droid in addition to the play store?
No swyping and no autocorrect make it DOA
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.
Nice, but physical keyboards are making a comeback.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114412
Why the use of “but” here? One does not get in the way of the other
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.
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.
https://pi.math.cornell.edu/%7Emec/2003-2004/cryptography/su...
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewise
For me, as a two thumb typer, I feel like if you had kept the letters generally on the same side (left/right) as Qwerty, even if nowhere near the same location, I could adapt to it much more quickly.
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.
Frankly, I just want to hit the letters with the same thumb.
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.
It's interesting but I wish I could still Swype on it
Wait this keyboard doesn’t support swipe typing? Hmmmm
sort of. swiping triggers every letter you cross
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.
I submit the idea that for most smartphone users, distance traveled and layout are not the limiting factor for typing speed.
"Like a Blackberry," I read 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.
Just sayin'...
No, they wouldn’t have.
Oh that made me remember the you're holding it wrong debacle with antenna reception.
You mean in the way that it was massively overblown in the media but ultimately wasn’t a big deal?