←back to thread

83 points QWERTYmini | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.002s | source

Mobile keyboards today are almost entirely based on the 26-key, 3-row QWERTY layout. Here’s a new 2-row, 16-key alternative designed specifically for smartphones.
Show context
MontyCarloHall ◴[] No.46221922[source]
Smartphone keyboards dynamically adjust the "hitbox" of each key based on what's previously been typed and overall letter frequencies of the language. So when typing "Paris is the capital of Fr..." [*], the A key becomes much easier to hit than its neighbors. Fun fact: back in the day, when this tech was less refined, certain letter contexts made the hitboxes of some keys effectively nonexistent [0].

I wonder if an approach like KKeyboard with larger but statically combined keys leads to faster typing than the current approach with smaller but dynamically "combined" keys.

[*] In reality, the context is modeled using a simple Hidden Markov Model with a much smaller effective context window that could not associate "Paris" and "France." But you get the idea.

[0] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/impossible-to-type-okee...

replies(8): >>46222171 #>>46222397 #>>46223541 #>>46224558 #>>46226518 #>>46229358 #>>46231768 #>>46241669 #
1. QWERTYmini ◴[] No.46222397[source]
Thanks for the thoughtful point! Hitbox behavior is largely constrained by OS -level policies from the manufacturers, so major improvements on that side are difficult for now. At this stage, I'm mainly trying to evaluate the layout and the input method itself - and hopefully, in the future, issues like hitbox tuning can be improved as well.
replies(1): >>46226775 #
2. rerdavies ◴[] No.46226775[source]
Not it's not.