Re:Text editing on mobile isn’t ok
by funcDropShadow on Monday September 25, 2023 @11:17AM
(#37645236)
There is another caveat with swipe in languages that write some words capitalized. The prediction fails to capitalize correctly in the middle of a sentence. The overhead to edit the word to the correct capitalization is so large, that swipe doesn't feel useful at all. A menu entry or gesture to capitalize the selected word would be really handy.
With gboard on Android, if you highlight a word and tap shift, it will go from lowercase to Capitalized to SHOUTING case.
Re:Text editing on mobile isn’t ok
by forgotpwd16 on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @05:26AM
(#37656640)
That's cool. Does gboard have some help that talks about such hidden features?
Re:Text editing on mobile isn’t ok
by i_am_a_peasant on Monday September 25, 2023 @12:03PM
(#37646097)
swipe is quite nice, and on my phone it even recognizes when I want to type in 3 different languages that thankfully use the same alphabet
There are two caveats, though. Firstly, I type differently when using swipe. As it favors words from the dictionary, my texts sound less spoken and more written. And secondly, having backspace delete the whole word is a critical feature to avoiding annoyance. If none of the predictions are correct, I just tap backspace and then type the word like I usually would. This, combined with the rarity of those hiccups makes swipe typing quicker than regular typing to me.
It also helps with relaxing my wrists as I can also hold the phone with one hand and swipe with the middle finger of my other in a gesture like holding a pen, but without the pen.
Maybe there's actually a third aspect; screen and hand size. I haven't owned any big phones, my iphone 13 mini is the biggest phone I ever owned, but I do have large hands, so swipe typing with a single thumb is not very difficult. Your experience might be different depending on your anatomy and device.