this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
172 points (98.9% liked)

Open Source

33279 readers
275 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

EDIT: Thanks, guys! I ended up downloading Heliboard from f-droid :)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Eyedust@sh.itjust.works 43 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (11 children)

I've been down this rabbit hole and here's the haul from Wonderland:

Conventional:

  • Heliboard - Has glide typing, but the available library is unstable and old. The most polished.

  • Florisboard - Currently under heavy development, but what's there is more than usable and very well done.

  • Unexpected Keyboard - I actually love this one, but as a Fold user I need some auto correct. Uses swipe motions on each key for symbols and punctuation.

Unconventional:

  • Thumbkey - A 3x3 grid using taps and swipes to type. I flip flop between this and Heliboard atm. Has circular motions to input caps or numbers. MASSIVE amount of layouts, including language, programmer, writer and more. Easy layout switch key on the fly.

  • Flickboard - Same setup as Thumbkey. This would be my go to ever since they added a landscape layout that smart switches on inner Fold screen, but there's no separate key height for it, so you have to deal with non-uniform on one screen which isn't easy to type on. Also has circular motion for caps. No numeric, but there's the option of having a small number column.

  • 8vim - The only one of it's kind since 8pen died. I'm learning this one and it's great, but wonky on inner Fold screen. Its hard to explain, but you use circular motions around on X wheel to input whole words at a time letter by letter. Start center, drag out into a quadrant, rotate to get your letter, go back to center, without lifting go to your next quadrant for the next letter. When you're done and back on center, let go to insert space, or you can move out into a quadrant then lift to end without a space. Takes a lot of getting used to.

[–] PenghisKahn@reddthat.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hey thanks for posting info about various keyboards. I'm typing this on flickboard. I downloaded it after reading your post. The circle to capitalize the center letter is a little wonky for me but otherwise so far so good.

I like trying non-standard keyboards since they might work better and there's no physical form constraints so why not.

My all time favorite keyboard was minuum, but it wasn't open source so I stopped using it when I started to care about that stuff.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dZh8r-xErGE

[–] Eyedust@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

After watching that vid, I'm sad to see that it's no longer being developed and that the devs didn't leave any open source behind. :( That would have been really cool to try out.

Good rule of thumb to capitalize letters with circle is just to make the circle as large as it can go within the keyboard area. It doesn't have to be centered around the key, just needs to start on the key. For center I usually just circle down from the key as far as I can.

load more comments (9 replies)