Tried it, Heliboard combined with FUTO Voice is much, much better.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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I like the idea of the keyboard being offline and the LLM stuff but so far I can't see a way for multi language input. I'm guessing it's too early in the alpha state for that but I will keep an eye open for it, it is a promising project. In the meantime I'll test the heliboard others were mentioning.
No keyboard besides SwiftKey and gboard have accented characters for devanagari script.
Every opensource one is a dealbreaker, and i dont know how to fix it myself.
I love Heliboard, but this is already giving me much better autocorrect, I'm not finding myself actively avoiding typing from my phone now, so it's a win to me
I though it was against the rules to post about proprietary software
https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/latinime
Debatable how "proprietary" it really is.
It isn't foss so it is a toss. You can't do much with the source code. It is the same as the Windows XP source code
And also proprietary, as it's distributed under source-available license:
https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard?tab=License-1-ov-file
What's the pushback against it? I like that you can modify and publish version of it as long as it's noncommercial
Edit: I don't understand the down votes, I'm trying to learn - what are the downsides of this thatkmake so unpopular?
It doesn't protect the 4 freedoms
TIL
https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/4_freedoms
These are the 4 Freedoms of open source software - which OSE applies to open source hardware and other products in general. These are the freedoms to inspect, use, modify, and sell.
> The freedom to inspect or view. In software, this came from the freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish . Access to the source code is a precondition for this - such as FreeCAD files, text documents, spreadsheets, calculations, instructions, etc.
The freedom to use. Run or otherwise execute the software, product, or process. You may be charged for using the thing. But this is a moot point, because as soon as someone buys it, it can be released for free.
The freedom to modify. This is a big point: making improvements or adaptation is a key to distributing value.
Economic freedom. The freedom to distribute or sell. Freedom distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. I use a FUTO voice and Helio keyboard combo by just calling FUTO from Helio when I want to dictate. Works great for me. I tried the FUTO keyboard and it works well enough but not quite as well as Helio for me. Still contribute money, though, because I like where they are headed.
Gonna give it a shot. Can't be any worse than the default Android Keeb
It's fairly good. I find the autocorrect to be poor and result in a much lower typing speed though.
It's good. I use it. Whoever made it did a great job.
Whats the general opinion about AnySoftKeyboard?
I've tried it, and it's quite good and heavily customisable, but a pain in the arse if you want to use more than one language. I think their Dutch version doesn't even work if I recall correctly.
I had switched to HeliBoard in order to de-Google as much as possible. I'm not militant about it, but if there's an alternative I'll take it.
Decided to try out FUTO because I felt like I was missing swipe typing. And it's good. But for me it's just too much. It turns out I didn't really miss swipe typing, and (possibly just a me issue) that extra feature was making FUTO much less responsive than Heliboard. So back I went.
I guess for me, simple and fast is more important than replicating my old Gboard experience. But each person is different.
Just learned about heliboard. Thank you! Wrote this with that keyboard and glide enabled as the others have said. Loving it!
You can add swipe (glide?) typing into HeliBoard. From their github readme:
- Glide typing (only with closed source library ☹️)
- library not included in the app, as there is no compatible open source library available
- can be extracted from GApps packages ("swypelibs"), or downloaded here (click on the file and then "raw" or the tiny download button)
The only reason HeliBoard doesn't include this themselves is presumably legal liability plus their dedication to the app not having any network permissions at all.
I've had no responsive issues with FUTO so far, just the occasional typo from the ever so slightly different layout.
Heliboard has swipe typing? Just go to the settings and tap on "Gesture Typing". I believe you have to download a proprietary library for it, though.
Switched after Louis' video about it. Haven't tried the voice yet, but just having swipe typing and suggestions again is a definite improvement.
Checking this out now! So far I like it. Only think I lose from using Gboard is the access to gifs, but I can work around that.
Privacy wise you should really have internet disabled for Gboard anyways which already disables the gif functionality.
Any idea what languages this keyboard support? I can't use any open source keyboard yet as all doesn't have good multi lingual support and typing.
It has alot of languages. Depending on what your looking for the voice is good the options are nice. Pair it with openboard and its a gem.
Have you tried HeliBoard? I think it has the best multilingual support for all these FOSS keyboards, but mind you, you have to manually load the dictionaries for the languages you want, and same thing for the swipe libraries, but it's all documented and linked on the GitHub page.
You have to configure the space bar to allow a long-press to give you a popup menu to select another language. Currently there's no way to have multiple languages with the same layout, it's annoying but you can work with it.
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