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The Swype keyboard that I am currently using is based on qwerty, but
out means that every time I need 'qu' I have to whizz across the
screen. It seems that for swype, the keys need to be designed for
mostly right to left operation (if you are right handed), and arranged in
some more commonly
used sequences.
I have only just started using this method, and it is rather fast, but
ones finger obscures the target in some cases, and travel length can
also be quite long, not to mention for longer words like accelerator or
refreshment it can make quite a mess.
[link]
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Supposedly, the QWERTY arrangement was specifically designed to separate common pairs of letters - so it's no wonder it's unsuitable. Perhaps ETAOIN SHRDLU would be good, at least for English. |
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You know how some keyboards (e.g. SwiftKey, which now has a sliding
input mode as well) learn what words you like to put next to each
other, so they can suggest better next words? I have thought for a few
years that they should use that data (once you've used the keyboard
for long enough for that data to accumulate, or after you've imported
your email/SMS history to be learned from) to generate a custom
keyboard layout that's optimized for sliding input of the words you
type most often. |
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Back when I used SwiftKey (i.e. before my tablet died, and I had to
switch to a seven-year-old Android phone that I pulled out of a
drawer, which runs Android 2.3 and therefore can't run SwiftKey), I
switched from QWERTY to Colemak purely because sliding over the
letters of "Protospace" on QWERTY was annoying. (I simultaneously
switched to a skin with blank keys, just for extra difficulty, but that's
neither here nor there.) It turned out that Colemak was actually worse
for English sliding input overall, but I kept it because it was fun.
Unfortunately, the Swype I have on my new old phone (that's not
actually usable as a phone, because I don't have service for it) doesn't
support Colemak, so I've gone back to QWERTY. But I hardly input any
text on there, because Relay for Reddit can't run on that ancient
Android version either… |
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