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OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

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Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#52
Really, really wish there was Japanese support. That's one of the main reasons I have to keep using Gboard.

Also, my typing ability on mobile has been spoiled by Google's admittedly superior autocorrect. I find that many of the frequent mistakes I make are not detected or modified incorrectly on other keyboards, and have to re-learn a lot. It almost feels like vendor lock-in from bad typing habits.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#53
post #12

I use AnysoftKeyboard (on F-Droid) [1]. I's pretty good, but has issues with the French apostrophe, that's often used to combine words. It also has multiple keyboard layouts, of which "terminal" compares favorably to hacker's keyboard. I like that it is configurable, and has a lot of text editing tools when swiping space up. I admit I lost some typing speed when I switched from the alternatives, but I'm happier with…

I don't see any reason why someone would use OpenBoard over AnySoftKeyboard. It would of been nice if there was an explanation of what differentiated it. If someone just wanted a different looking keyboard they could just have created a new theme for AnySoftKeyboard. AnySoftKeyboard also is the only open source keyboard for Android that has gesture typing. Which is something I grew to love from when I used Gboard.

The search function on FDroid is atrocious. I find all the language packs for Anysoftkeyboard but not the keyboard itself.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a keyboard app just should not allowed to have a network connection, but yeah, a thing to dream in 2021.

As an Android user, not developer, I wanted to ask how are permissions on Android these days. Is "internet access" permission just granted for any app by default without asking the user? There were initiatives (probably 3rd party) for more granular permissions, but I haven't noticed this becoming common. I vaguely remember that Android started asking for some individual permissions not upon installation, but only whe…

A good solution to this is using iptables to control what has access to which networks, rather than relying on the OS. AFWall+ is a nice front end for iptables and requires root. Netguard is another option that doesn't require root, but I'm not sure how that one works.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#55
post #12

I use AnysoftKeyboard (on F-Droid) [1]. I's pretty good, but has issues with the French apostrophe, that's often used to combine words. It also has multiple keyboard layouts, of which "terminal" compares favorably to hacker's keyboard. I like that it is configurable, and has a lot of text editing tools when swiping space up. I admit I lost some typing speed when I switched from the alternatives, but I'm happier with…

I just now figured I’d try AnySoftKeyboard. Its stock behaviour seems a little weird in places, but I’ll try it for a while and see how it goes. But the real thing that’s annoying me is how uncompromisingly huge it is. Its default behaviour has it consuming a shade under two thirds of the available screen space on my not-inordinately-large phone, compared with under half on the Samsung keyboard in its compact (reduced-height) mode. You can control the height of the top row (and it’s compact by default), but can’t control the height of the rest (other than by going to a theme that consumes even more space)? I want to eliminate the wasted ~30px at the bottom, and shrink each row by around 20px. I can easily save 100px here without removing anything.

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#56
post #12

I use AnysoftKeyboard (on F-Droid) [1]. I's pretty good, but has issues with the French apostrophe, that's often used to combine words. It also has multiple keyboard layouts, of which "terminal" compares favorably to hacker's keyboard. I like that it is configurable, and has a lot of text editing tools when swiping space up. I admit I lost some typing speed when I switched from the alternatives, but I'm happier with…

AnySoftKeyboard on the surface seems cool, however, they've overloaded it with unnecessary characters. When I tried it, I had English selected and yet somehow it has characters that are _never_ used in English. That's not necessarily an issue, but when non-English characters are easier to type than English characters, it decreases my typing speed significantly. I raised an issue about it and was quickly dismissed. I've stuck to SwiftKey since. I'll have to try OpenBoard!

Re: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respects your privacy

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any reason why someone would use OpenBoard over AnySoftKeyboard. It would of been nice if there was an explanation of what differentiated it. If someone just wanted a different looking keyboard they could just have created a new theme for AnySoftKeyboard. AnySoftKeyboard also is the only open source keyboard for Android that has gesture typing. Which is something I grew to love from when I used Gboard.

The search function on FDroid is atrocious. I find all the language packs for Anysoftkeyboard but not the keyboard itself.

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.menny.android.anysoftkeyboa...

I think the search function is working fine, the app is just called "AnySoftKeyboard 3D Theme" in the F-Droid app but not on the website for some reason.

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