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Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

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Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#641

Post by lannisterstark »

edanm wrote: post #566
jillesvangurp wrote: post #458

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…

What I don't understand is why speech-to-text is so bad (on the iPhone at least), and it's related to this editing issue. Text to speech will never be a perfect replacement for other forms of text entry, because you're limited in when you can use it. But it's so close to being good. The main issues are so easy to solve, they're just silly UI issues around editing. You can enter text verbally, it works surprisingly we…

Funnily. Speech to text is incredible on pixels and many Samsung phones (S series at least).

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#642

Post by MonaroVXR »

lolinder wrote: post #487
jillesvangurp wrote: post #458

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…

I find that typing on a phone (iPhone or Android) these days is substantially easier than typing on an iPad because of swipe. It's still nowhere as efficient as a keyboard in the hands of a skilled typist, but I can often produce text fast enough that it isn't worth getting out my laptop. On an iPad it's far worse, because I actually do have to use the bad QWERTY touchscreen key-by-key. What I keep hoping for as far…

Still having issues with swype, im way faster with normal typing.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#643

Post by cozzyd »

p-e-w wrote: post #534
jillesvangurp wrote: post #458

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…

> People produce less text with more errors in more time on mobile. I mean yes, of course, but how could it be otherwise? A desktop keyboard is 10x the size of an entire mobile phone. The idea that it should somehow be possible to attain the typing performance provided by such a large dedicated input device on a phone the size of a keyboard's space bar is pretty ridiculous. And I'm unconvinced that the "Eloquent" des…

using text to speech on a train is going to make me a lot of friends...

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#644

Post by Nevermark »

dTal wrote: post #500
Nevermark wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My goal is not to return back to the desktop, but to move mobile forward." >> Why should we privilege an intentionally nerfed computing experience How would "mov[ing] mobile forward" privilege mobile? How would it impair your experience on your desktop?

The implication is clear from the wording. Desktop is "back", mobile is "forward".

Someone being “mobile forward”, doesn’t hold desktops (or mobile laptops) back.

That’s a false dichotomy.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#645

Post by Semaphor »

devilbunny wrote: post #582
ok123456 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was much better when you could get phones with physical keyboards. Only recently has swipe on android gotten to the accuracy of typing on a physical phone keyboard, but not the accuracy. But, that was lost because of the iphonification of the whole smart phone sector.

There was a near-perfect solution on Android for years: Swype. Why the people that bought it buried it, I can never understand. It was so much better - even ten years ago - than modern swiping keyboards. It even had a layout that was just for editing.

> It was so much better - even ten years ago - than modern swiping keyboards.

Unless it learned too much about you. I found that regularly clearing all data from it improved swiping accuracy… It’s just like with all automated personalization, it doesn’t work.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#647

Post by roge7331 »

ndorf wrote: post #594
hilbert42 wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People produce less text with more errors in more time on mobile." I absolutely agree, typing or editing text on a smartphone is just horrible. There are many times I've started to write an email or post to say HN and I've been so frustrated I've aborted the process and restarted it on my laptop. It's down outright infuriating I have to do this. [I just hope someone of influence at Google reads these posts and acts…

Speaking of selecting text, at least on Android there is a trend in both Google and third-party messaging apps of only letting you copy the entire message, not a substring thereof. I wish I could take a peek into the brain of whoever came up with that idea -- ideally, after removing it with a large, sharp rock.

Most of the time the user just wants to share the entire speech bubble and it is way easier this way instead of fiddling with beginning and endpoints

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#648

Post by sznio »

devilbunny wrote: post #582
ok123456 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was much better when you could get phones with physical keyboards. Only recently has swipe on android gotten to the accuracy of typing on a physical phone keyboard, but not the accuracy. But, that was lost because of the iphonification of the whole smart phone sector.

There was a near-perfect solution on Android for years: Swype. Why the people that bought it buried it, I can never understand. It was so much better - even ten years ago - than modern swiping keyboards. It even had a layout that was just for editing.

swype was so damn good and nothing comes even close. too bad it got killed off.

windows phone keyboard was good too. the key "hitbox" would grow or shrink based on predictive text and typing speed, so if you're writing something from the dictionary you could just slap the rough area of the button and it would register the most likely one. You'd feel it though when typing in something from outside the dictionary, suddenly it felt like you forgot how to type. Once you slowed your typing down it returned to behaving like a standard keyboard. Also, it had a little trackpoint-type nub on the virtual keyboard which you could drag for moving the cursor. It was significantly more accurate than anything else in any mobile OS.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#649

Post by sznio »

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.

>exept zooming (pinching with 2 fingers)

2 fingers is already too much. Maybe I could've done it with 2010 smartphones, but new ones are so large that I switched to double-tap then drag ages ago. It's annoying having to involve a second hand just to zoom something, and trying to do it with a single hand is just a recipe for destroying your phone.

Re: Text editing on mobile: the invisible problem

#650

Post by sznio »

satvikpendem wrote: post #437
bombela wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android it often stutters, the cursor jumps across the characters at random speeds, sometimes it teleports sometimes it moves one character at a time smoothly. When you lift your thumb it often registers as an extra motion in an unexpected direction. And this is on a flagship Google phone. And it only allows left-right motion, not up-down. So even if you know about it. It's more an exercise in frustration than any…

That's not been my experience on Android, I can go left right up down just fine. I've tried this on SwiftKey keyboard however but I'm sure it's the same in GBoard.

It's really bad in GBoard. I just tap the text itself and if I get close enough to what I want to edit I just backspace and retype. I regularly remove 5-10 characters just to fix a single mistyped one.
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