It seems to have a focus into typing Bangla language. I don’t have a use for it but still find it refreshing that we are seeing a better representation of languages other than English.
Initially, it did have some focus on typing in the Bangla language since I, the developer, am from Bangladesh. But now in later versions, that focus was also given to other languages and those Bangla focused working or tone have stayed and need to be updated
You know, despite the massive amount of iffy stuff, I tried it.
It works really well. I wish I could find something in the way of critique, but all I have is that there’s too many options to sort through easily. Which, it’s obviously designed to be a kitchen sink kind of thing, so I don’t think that’s a legitimate complaint. I do, however, think that it’ll be offputting to a lot of people, particularly when so many of the options are going to be unwanted. I don’t think many people are looking to have their keyboard do currency conversions, as an example.
Some will, absolutely; but I think that there’s always going to be multiple things that any given user isn’t going to want, and the process of onboarding is dense enough that a lot of people are likely to nope out.
So, if the degree of bells and whistles is a major goal, expect there to be objections. Otherwise, maybe shift more of those options to be plugins that have to be actively plugged in rather than a toggle, even in the full version.
In terms of basic function though, it’s solid. Glide typing is good, no real issues there that aren’t inherent to learning a new keyboard, and less than some. Prediction is good, though some longer words get truncated and ellipsissed into illegibility. Which is also a problem any keyboard will have unless it finds a way to expand the suggestion bar beyond what’s normal. Swype is the only one I ever used that reliably just displays brobdingnagian words, and it starts out with a wider suggestion bar to begin with, that you can scroll to the side with. Which may be something to look into for the more loquacious logophiles out there.
I’m not an anti ai absolutist at all, though I lack any trust in the commercial options out there by virtue of them having stolen their entire training.
While I can’t be arsed to do a proper feature request, one of the best things about Swype is it’s layout of secondary keys. They’re a bit better than most in terms of where it places more often used symbols. Being able to customize symbols layout would be a phenomenal feature that I’ve only seen on heliboard lately.
Not gonna lie, florisboard fits my needs better than anything but swype so far. But this comes in a not too distant third. That’s saying a lot from me.
Hi, this is the author of wmkeyboard. Thanks for the detailed write-up. Here are my thoughts:
Yes, it is designed as a kitchen sink, or rather, it’s turned out that way due to improper planning. I’m in the process of streamlining things a bit more, and there are still a few things to iron out. And yes, some people like this and some don’t; I’m someone who does. I initially built this keyboard only for myself and shared it, not anticipating that it would get the traction it is getting right now. And yes, I have already thought about moving things to be purely opt-in, like plugins, and I was just working on that before reading your comment. You can also make the wmkeyboard suggestion bar scroll to the side with this setting and you can edit not only symbols layout but any layout and screen in the keyboard, even things like the handwriting input panel or the emoji panel or number input or anything else. It also has a visual layout editor which I believe heliboard and Florisboard lack and also I don’t think they allow changing the other layouts that wmkeyboard does. Oh, also, you can import settings, layouts, themes, etc., from Heliboard, Florisboard, and more for easier switching.
But this comes in a not too distant third. That’s saying a lot from me.
Yes that is saying a lot about you and your ability to utilise this keyboard. Most of the user reviews I’ve heard say that they’ve been using multiple keyboards including the ones you mentioned and this one is the best they’ve tried
Also I’ve taken note of the overly cumbersome settings navigation and onboarding and will make them more easy and straightforward in the future
I think this has the highest number of features amongst all android keyboard apps. I really like this.
Can it do multiple languages at once?
Yes, you can add two languages then in your primary language link the other one under the Also suggest from setting and it’ll suggest both languages at once
No way there are 600+ languages. What do they count? English, Old English, Middle English, Slightly Older Than Middle English, The English Mel Gibson Spoke In Braveheart…?
I just looked this up and apparently Papua New Guinea alone has over 800 languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_languages
There are over 7000 languages in the world according to https://www.ethnologue.com/
And 43% of people speak languages from the Indo-European family. I just finished reading Proto which explains how this happened. It’s a wild story.
If AI isn’t off the table why isn’t it able to use open models to bring feature parity to the lite version, even if it doesn’t work quite as well as Google?
Developer here, thanks for your concern, Lite now has quite good feature parity using open models, as you suggested. In 0.6.3, and yes it doesn’t work quite as well as Google but some are damn close with others good enough
Eh, certainly not for me given the accommodation for offline LLMs, even if it isn’t on by default and you need an API key…I just don’t want a keyboard that caters to that slop. It’s a red flag to me, I said what I said!
Decided to try it out. Its off by default when setting up and you need your own API key. You can also have a fully offline version if you want.
I just don’t like the idea of making an accommodation for prompt slot machines, like at all. I will just stick with what I have until I can find a keyboard that doesn’t allow for any welcome of LLMs.
Fair Enough. For me its still better than Google, and the language support and Swype has performed better for me than Helioboard did.
Likewise, I don’t even have a spellchecker on mine; but I do have a bunch of other keyboards ƚɒʜƚ ᶜᵃⁿ m̶̡͚̲̻̳͙̰̩̦̤̦̪̫̻̽͗̊́̎̍͗ͅá̷̧̪̣̞̱̗̩̌̾̎̈̂̆͋͋̐͊͘̚̕͜ḳ̸̹͖́̑̑̃͌͂̋͜e̶̢̢͕̯̭̠̪̮̯͖͎̗̦͉̓̓̀̅̓̿ ̶͓̲̱͎̻̣́͛̍͗͆̄̿͛̕͜͜͜ 𝖆 𝖇𝖚𝖓𝖈𝖍 🅾🅵 𝕨𝕖𝕚𝕣𝕕 ԏєҳԏ. 𝓘𝓽‘𝓼 𝓯𝓪𝓷𝓬𝔂 𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽.٩(♡ε♡ )۶
Wow, you’re so brave
It looks great. Good job. I’m typing this with it.
