Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

jenson.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 693 posts

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#451

Post by Y_Y »

awesomeMilou wrote: post #438
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #257

This is absolutely a problem, but I'm not convinced the author has found a solution. I'd have to try it to know for sure, but from the description, it still sounds finicky. I believe touch screens are fundamentally a bad interface for productivity. Consider the range of actions provided by a mouse: You can hover without clicking, you can left click, or you can right click, all with nearly pixel-level precision. Add i…

> This is a hardware problem, not a software problem. This is a UI validation problem. Apple proved in 2007 that you can port tons of applications over to the smartphone. They had to invent their own language for interactions though ("pinch-to-zoom" etc) and it took them two weeks of focus with all their software development staff involved to fix keyboards on capacitive touch. It may not be possible to reach the same…

Do you really think Apple invented pinch-to-zoom? CMU Sensor Lab had it back in ’85. Steve Jobs coincidentally visited soon after and later claimed to have patented the technology for the iPhone. That was shown not to be true in the big Apple vs. Samsung patent case.

References available upon request.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#452

Post by efreak »

Pxtl wrote: post #140
deely3 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about IPhone but on Android its simply impossible to Paste text between two words. You can't paste text into cursor position you can only replace selected text with Pasted text. Thats my main biggest issue. Also, why the fuck there no Copy/Paste buttons on mobile keyboard??

It's actually gotten better since the clipboard key is in autocomplete bar in gboard now. If you have something in clipboard: 1. Place your cursor 2. Yes, I know you fat-fingered the exact position. Drag on spacebar to slide the cursor around (Holy crap this is the most non-discoverable feature). 3. Press the clipboard button to show clipboard menu (or, if the clipboard button isn't showing, use the 4-square menu to…

What if I don't want the keyboard monitoring my clipboard? Nothing should be monitoring my clipboard. If I choose to paste from the clicked, at that point you can look at it, not before.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#453

Post by cstrahan »

failuser wrote: post #125
lachlan_gray wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On an iPhone if you hold the space bar down the whole keyboard becomes a kind of trackpad which you can use to move the cursor. Since all the keys disappear, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to add something that works like mouse buttons so you could select text or paste in a specific spot in that “mode”. Right now it’s so frustrating to do any kind of selecting.

You can use that for selection as well, tap somewhere else on the keyboard. Used to be even better with 3D Touch, you did not have to wait for the long press to register.

> You can use that for selection as well, tap somewhere else on the keyboard.

Doesn't appear to work.

What does work is pushing a little harder (i.e. "force touch") with the same finger/thumb that initiated the move-cursor-via-spacebar gesture.

Only problem there is that sometimes the forcetouch doesn't register (no matter how hard you pinch the screen), or is too trigger happy and starts selecting text when you only wanted to move the cursor.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#454

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Y_Y wrote: post #446
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #257

This is absolutely a problem, but I'm not convinced the author has found a solution. I'd have to try it to know for sure, but from the description, it still sounds finicky. I believe touch screens are fundamentally a bad interface for productivity. Consider the range of actions provided by a mouse: You can hover without clicking, you can left click, or you can right click, all with nearly pixel-level precision. Add i…

I agree, but note that a lot of this is solved by having a pen with buttons.

I agree, styluses are great! Placing the cursor and highlighting text on e.g. a Nintendo DS is a lot easier than on an iPhone. (Everything else about typing on the DS sucked of course, but it's not like Nintendo put substantial effort into that experience.)

I do find that e.g. the Apple Pencil doesn't have a small enough tip for text selection to work well, it's really made for drawing.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#455

Post by Y_Y »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #454
Y_Y wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but note that a lot of this is solved by having a pen with buttons.

I agree, styluses are great! Placing the cursor and highlighting text on e.g. a Nintendo DS is a lot easier than on an iPhone. (Everything else about typing on the DS sucked of course, but it's not like Nintendo put substantial effort into that experience.) I do find that e.g. the Apple Pencil doesn't have a small enough tip for text selection to work well, it's really made for drawing.

(just to add, the Latin plural of or "stylus" is "stylī", so in English we can use "styli" or "styluses")

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#456

Post by nobodyandproud »

happymellon wrote: post #339
nobodyandproud wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a small, niche but very real market and product: A keyboard case with Bluetooth (but security!) or USB-C. Bonus points for e-ink-based keys. Edit: Realistically I’d be surprised if something like this doesn’t already exist.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/bbq20-keyboard-with-track... What about an updated BlackBerry Torch 9800?

That looks pretty cool, and others must’ve thought that as well because it’s sold out.

Some of the immediate things that came to mind were making a case that integrates the phone with the keyboard; and a small battery to extend the life of the phone since the keyboard adds to the formfactor anyway.

Bonus points if this creates a market for a small phone again (iphone 12 user here).

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#457

Post by Wowfunhappy »

hutzlibu wrote: post #450
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #257

This is absolutely a problem, but I'm not convinced the author has found a solution. I'd have to try it to know for sure, but from the description, it still sounds finicky. I believe touch screens are fundamentally a bad interface for productivity. Consider the range of actions provided by a mouse: You can hover without clicking, you can left click, or you can right click, all with nearly pixel-level precision. Add i…

"A smartphone is like a computer with a one-button mouse " Not quite. A touchscreen can detect many fingers, that can do many gestures. The problem is, exept zooming (pinching with 2 fingers) and moving around (swiping with 2 fingers) the potential is pretty much unused.

It's a good point, but I'm not sure how to use those gestures for text entry. TFA didn't go down the multi-touch route either in their proposal. But it's possible I'm not being creative enough!

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#458

Post by jillesvangurp »

People produce less text with more errors in more time on mobile. I actively avoid having to type anything on mobile. If I have my laptop open, I'll use whatsapp or signal on that. I often wait replying on either of those until I get my laptop. Just way less frustrating to not have to correct >25% of my key presses. If I have to use the mobile keyboard, I'll often just send a message with typos, no capitals, and skip some of the more redundant words. It seems lots of people do that. Phones just suck for text input. Longform text entering on a phone is by and large not a thing for most people. It's mostly a read only device for passively consuming news and media. And taking photos.

I find it telling that one of the more popular addons for ipads are covers with a builtin keyboard. It's a way bigger device than an iphone. But yet the keyboard sucks enough that Apple sells covers with a keyboard. Of course, all the touchscreen keyboard problems that the ipad has are magnified on their iphone. Yet, they don't have a solution for that. And they also sell a stylus for the ipad. Because fingers lack precision. It's the same OS but there seem to be no such options for the iphone. Does the stylus even work with an iphone? Is that deliberate? It's not like people are going to be magically more precise on an iphone relative to a huge ipad. Conclusion, Apple just accepts that that's the way things are. And besides, Steve Jobs would turn in his grave if they dared to ship an iphone with a stylus.

Hardware keyboards on phones used to be a thing. I worked at Nokia back in the day. Really nice keyboards. Blackberries were popular too. People wrote lots of stuff on those things. I wouldn't mind a little pocket laptop. It's not like my pixel 6 is small or subtle in my pocket. It would be more useful with a slide out keyboard.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#459

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Nition wrote: post #398

> We saw this in our user testing when users tried to place the text cursor accurately: they would miss by a few characters... One small thing: I don't know how it works on Android, but I used to have an N9 and then the Jolla phone and you could tap anywhere in text to place the cursor there. iOS doesn't let you, except confusingly on the very first tap that activates the cursor. For subsequent taps, you can tap exac…

You know what was great about text selection on the N9? When you dragged the cursor, you got that haptic tick-tick-tick for each character the cursor passed over. I'll admit I don't entirely understand why this was so beneficial, but somehow it made it substantially easier to get the cursor to the right spot.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#460

Post by wffurr »

akdor1154 wrote: post #445
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #257

This is absolutely a problem, but I'm not convinced the author has found a solution. I'd have to try it to know for sure, but from the description, it still sounds finicky. I believe touch screens are fundamentally a bad interface for productivity. Consider the range of actions provided by a mouse: You can hover without clicking, you can left click, or you can right click, all with nearly pixel-level precision. Add i…

The first gen or so of Android phones had an optical 'trackpad' below the screen, some were terrible but some were really good, allowing far more precise cursor movement than a touchscreen. I wish this feature had survived, it was awesome for text editing.

Some had a trackball which was fairly precise.
Post reply on HN