I could not recommend AnySoftKeyboard to my mum. I could recommend Florisboard, tho.
Openboard is virtually dead from what I can see. So that leaves Florisboard as the only open source alternative (that I know of) that could really be used by the masses. And the world would actually be a way better place if we all opensource freaks could install Florisboard on our family/friends phones and them barely noticing anything weird.
The problem is… no word suggestions yet. It’s been years and we are still lacking what is almost an essential feature of a phone’s keyboard.
I wish I could really work on it, but I lack the knowledge to do so; so I hope I am bringing some attention to the project.
Is there any other alternative I am unaware of?
OpenBoard’s developing is being carried on by one of the original developers: https://github.com/Helium314/openboard
It allows to include an external swipe-type library (proprietary, from Gboard) in case you need it, and it works really well. The only problem is that currently it’s only available on github, so you can only update manually or with obtainium
The state of OSS keyboards is lamentable - no shade to devs, because most projects seem largely abandoned, except for Thumb-Key, which is exciting, active… and mostly not my bag. 8VIM is a fun version of this, but again, I’m mostly a two-thumber, so these slow me down.
Floris is almost there, except there’s little development activity, and the lack of autocorrect keeps me from using it most of the time. The clipboard is great, and the alt-key keyset is fantastic (it includes interrobang!). But the swipe is decent, and it has a 9-pad number entry which - although it can sadly not be made the default - should be mandatory.
AnySoft has some serious stability bugs that keep me from using it.
So I use OpenBoard most of the time, because its autocorrect works pretty well. It has no swiping. It has no 9-key number entry. It has no interrobang. While I like the multiple-choice paste history, most of the time the multi-step paste is just more work.
Gboard has all of these, but it comes from Google.
Keyboard development mist just be unfun; I agree with you: it’s a sad state of affairs.
Do I understand you correctly that Floris had swipe typing? Cause I tried the OpenBoard fork that has it, and it was horrible. It technically worked, sometimes, but most often was even slower than hitting individual letters. Usually I have to correct maybe 1 word out of 20 or so with GBoard, and even then what I want is one of the suggestions 95% of the time. with the OpenBoard fork, 3 out of 5 words were wrong and the correct one was suggested like 2 out of 5 times.
If its swipe is usable, I might give Floris a go…
edit: ah, English only. Not gonna work for me. I also prefer to have multiple languages active and being able to swipe in any/all of them. guess I’m stuck with GBoard…
There is a fork of openboard with swiping at https://github.com/Helium314/openboard
Edit: you technically need to download the swiping library to keep it fully FOSS, but I am okay with that given there is no other alternative. Instructions on where to find a swiping binary are on the github
Edit edit: another fork of openboard with swiping here, but is less up to date https://github.com/erkserkserks/openboard
This doesn’t have word-prediction, but I develop !thumbkey@lemmy.ml as one of my side projects.
Just tried it out. It’s a really cool app for casual messaging. I’m not sure if I can use it on something like Termux, but it’s a cool option to have.
how long does it take to get fluid with it? This is my 5th day and it’s still a bit difficult for me
I use OpenBoard and never had any issue.
It’s not open source at all. But I wanted to mention I find yandex board to be much better than gboard. Swipe works well, speech to text is reliable (unlike gboard for me), and it has a nice long clipboard history.
