v0.3.16

[patrickgold]

New app icons (#1775)

FlorisBoard now has new app icons for each track, designed and provided for use in this project by BloodRaven0, thanks a lot! <3

Stable	Beta	Debug

Input logic and editor caching behavioral changes (#1822)

• Major rework of the internal editor instance and caching logic
  • Editor content state is now cached in a "window" around the cursor, which allows to make predictive cache changes and avoid unnecessary input connection calls (Major rework of input logic, connection handling and state management #1822)
  • Improve input performance by utilizing the new cached window system
  • Improve the communication between FlorisBoard and the target input connection
• Adjust timing for double tap / key repeat events (Double tap shift for caps lock #1095)

Minimum required Android version change

The minimum required Android version has been changed from Android 6 (API level 23) to Android 7 (API level 24). This change was hard to decide but it allows to fully use the ICU platform package Android provides since API 24. See #1822 for the detailed reasoning for this change. I am aware that this step may affect some users (especially old tablets), but FlorisBoard is a fast moving modern Android keyboard with limited developing resources, so I decided in favor of increasing the minimum required Android version.

Enhancements and fixes for space, enter and delete keys

• Add delete key long press option in gesture prefs (Hold delete key to delete last words precisely #637)
  • The long press action for the delete key can now be changed between "Delete last character" and "Delete last word". If the latter is used and you hold down the delete key, entire words instead of characters will be deleted until you release the delete key again.
• Add "Always delete word" toggle for glide typing (Delete after glide typing should delete the whole word #1541, Option to only delete a single letter after glide #1036)
  • By default tapping delete after a glided word will now delete the whole glided word, except if you disable the newly added toggle.
• Fix delete key precise selection gesture bugs
• Fix double-space period placing period incorrectly (Double-space period is placing the period in the wrong spot #524)
• Pressing delete will not reset the keyboard anymore inside the Settings preview field (Keyboard preview bug inside the app #1617)
• Fix enter key behavior for multiline and shift (incorrect behaviour send key in Signal app #1037)
  • FlorisBoard now supports if messaging apps' "Enter key sends message" option, as long as the target messaging app field is configured correctly. Tested and verified in WhatsApp and Signal.
• Fix space bar tapping rapidly causing characters to be deleted (Spacebar deletes some characters when tapped rapidly. #1792)

Shift-key/Capitalization-specific changes

• Rework shift state management
  • Shifting now differentiates between "Unshifted", "Shifted (Manual)", "Shifted (Automatic)" and "Caps lock"
  • Fix Dvorak layout symbols which misinterpreted shift states previously (Auto-capitalize letters only #528)
• Add ability to hold shift without caps lock (Hold-Shift for Quick Capitilization #1764)
  • This allows you to use the shift key as known on a PC keyboard. If you long press shift and start typing within the first second (exact time depends on your long press timeout in prefs), caps lock will not get activated. However if you only long press shift without character input, caps lock will be activated, like previously also possible in 0.3.15 and earlier.
• Fix shift key state concurrency issue in touch logic (Shift doesn't work when writing fast #227)
• Fix shift long press resetting after releasing (Hold shift to capatalize #1834)
• Fix auto-capitalization and re-evaluate on new subtype (Auto Capitalization should be disabled on Korean keyboard #1623)

Keyboard logic and UI changes / fixes

• Added a button for switching to an IME that supports voice (Added a button for switching to an IME that supports voice #1587, thanks @ElishaAz)
  • This voice button currently requires that a proper voice IME is installed and does not work with voice overlays!
• Fix shift+space swipe not selecting text (Shift + Space-swipe doesn't select text #1843)
• Fix auto-capitalization not behaving correctly (Auto Capitalization doesn't work on some apps #1861)
• Fix extensions not properly reloading when context switches
• Fix Snygg Shape crashing for corner radii >= 34dp (App Crash On Theme Editor  #1838)

Keyboard layout changes

• Add additional Persian layout (Add new persian layout #1823, thanks @m
• Add Dvorak (ÑÇ) layout (Dvorak-ES layout request #1853, thanks @tsiflimagas)ahantor)
• Add Indonesian layout (Add Indonesian layout #1879, thanks @Linerly)
• Update Hungarian popup mapping (Update hu.json #1859, thanks @ptrg)
• Vietnamese Telex: Add mising case (Vietnamese Telex: Add mising case  #1862, thanks @thanhhocse96)
• Vastly improve Telex for Vietnamese (Telex Composer for Vietnamese: Add rule for a, ă, ê, ô, ơ, ... [Ticket: #1751 #proposal] #1797, thanks @thanhhocse96)
  • Please see Improve Vietnamese keyboard #1751 and Telex Composer for Vietnamese: Add rule for a, ă, ê, ô, ơ, ... [Ticket: #1751 #proposal] #1797 for details regarding this change
• Update Kurdish layout and overall improvements (Update Kurdish layout and overall improvements  #1798, thanks @GoRaN909)

Performance and APK size improvements (#1870, #1894)

• Add baseline profile
  • This baseline profile should be a slight improvement in the initial app startup time
• Add Proguard optimization to beta and stable builds
  • Production builds now properly remove unused code and resources, thus decreasing the APK size by about 3MB (~18MB to ~15MB)
  • Depending on your device this can also lead to a performance improvement in both app startup time and runtime usage
• Minor improvements to the runtime performance, especially regarding events triggered by user input:
  • Improve input feedback controller performance (especially for vibrations)
  • Improve language display name performance by caching it
  • Prevent unnecessary stack trace collection in KeyboardState
  • Improve auto capitalization performance

Glide typing improvements and bug fixes (#1844)

• Add punctuation rules logic for auto-spacing (Add symbol-properties for automatic spaces to improve gesture typing #596, Glide Typing a word that has an apostrophe doesn’t automatically add a space before it #1828)
  • This change vastly improves the auto-space functionality for Latin-based languages by providing punctuation rules for evaluation of symbols preceding/following spaces.
  • Add ability to define additional punctuation rules in keyboard
• Fix glide typing not working for long words (Can't draw long words when gesture typing #1851)
  • This change addresses the long known issue of glide having difficulties with long words. For phone screens this issue is now fixed, however for tablets or very large phone screens this issue may still occur. A fix for these kind of large screen requires a major overhaul of the glide logic in the future.
• Auto-disable glide typing for password fields
• Fix active key not appearing pressed for moving gestures (Keys highlight on gestures #1846)
• Fix glide typing broken in some input fields (Suggestions/glide typing don't input in some apps #1009, Glide doesn't work with input fields which are raw (e.g. Scarlett Notes check box) #1247)
• Fix phantom space not resetting in selection update, causing the glide word deletion mode to not reset (Word deletion mode (after gliding) stays active on cursor move #916)
• Fix glide threshold using incorrect units, causing short words to be impossible to input using glide (Glide typing doesn't activate on some words #1023)

Emoji improvements / bug fixes (#1855)

• Rework internal EmojiCompat implementation and decrease emoji load time UI jank (After long time of not using emojis, It will take time for them to appear #1770)
• Re-add vibration to emoji screen (Will vibration come back to the emoji view? #1675)
• Fix symbols emoji category icon not representative (Musical Note Symbol Wrong Category #1421)
• Fix incorrect aspect ratio for emoji keys (Emojis missing half if increased #1856)

Settings changes

• Possibly fix prefs sometimes reset on startup (Saved preferences do not apply after restarting phone #1726, Update to 0.3.15 configuration reset #1868)
  • Note that this bug occurs only on some devices and you probably haven't experienced this bug beforehand, so this fix does not apply to you
  • Should you be the unlucky user to experience this bug after this release again, please provide more details in Saved preferences do not apply after restarting phone #1726, so I can try to find the reason why this bug rarely occurs. Thanks!
• Add debug log view/export screen
• Add exact stacktrace error log for backup failure (Failure on settings export #1847)
• Add translations for emoji key and landscape input Syngg elements
• Change OSS notices to mikepenz/AboutLibraries plugin
• Improve CrashDialogActivity crash log generation and add details

Other changes

• Add clipboard URL and Email detection (Smartbar Clipboard entries with url entry #1889)
• Fix Smartbar placeholder suggestion UI not updating correctly
• Improve devtools input state overlay
• Refactor AndroidX.Room to use KSP + export schema correctly
• Rework internal project structure, code base and some package names (Source file package structure changes #1780)

Known issues

• When showing the keyboard UI after longer idling, it may refuse to accept touch input at first. If this happens, hide the keyboard and tap back into the text field you want to type, then it works again. This is a bug which is very difficult to address and no solution has been found yet.

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Commits included in this release: v0.3.15...v0.3.16

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This discussion was created from the release v0.3.16.

[ghost]

One thing I noticed with the new version: while typing, words will be underlined, as if some kind of autocorrect/word suggestion was active, even though I have all of that stuff turned off. Is that intentional? It doesn't really affect functionality and it doesn't mess up my typing, but it is a bit odd.

[patrickgold]

Underlined?? In red or blue? The only thing that would do this is the FlorisBoard spell checker service, although generally it should either do nothing or mark misspelled words only.

[ghost]

Underlined in white

Example:

[patrickgold]

Ah that underline. That's intended and marks what the keyboard sees as the current word. This is a prerequisite for word suggestions so it always knows the current typed word and can also easily replace it (autocorrect). Of course without word suggestions it makes little sense atm, but that's the thing I am currently starting to work on internally, so it will soon make more sense.

[ghost]

Will the underline be disabled when word suggestions are turned off, once that implementation is ready? It probably makes sense to keep it right now, for testing purposes (then people can figure out if word detection is wonky, and report problems in advance), but if word suggestions are off then the underline doesn't serve a purpose. Other keyboards function that way, at least.

Speaking of other keyboards, AOSP Keyboard will underline whole words when the cursor is positioned in the middle of words, while Florisboard only underlines what is on the left of the cursor. This should probably be adjusted, to allow for "selecting" words by tapping anywhere on them.

[Kreuger]

Holy hell. Lots of great fixes.

[Stampeder525]

Unfortunately I'm still getting some auto-capitalization issues in the latest stable release. Proper nouns & the "I" pronoun still don't capitalize, and the first word after a period also doesn't seem to capitalize. Auto-capitalizations is enabled in the Corrections settings, but is there another one I'm missing? Or some way to customize it?

[patrickgold]

The thing is the auto-capitalization is currently only listening to the generic shift preference of the app - the app can either suggest No Capitalization, Cap Sentence, Cap Words or Cap All, and FlorisBoard will follow this and auto-shift depending on the state. So if you are in an app which suggests no caps, the shift key will never change. Mostly you can test the correct behavior of auto-capitalization in messenger apps like Signal, WhatsApp, etc.

Proper nouns & the "I" pronoun still don't capitalize

Yes that's true, because that's technically the job of the autocorrect algorithm, which as of 0.3.16 does not exist. But this is exactly what the current 0.4 work will address over the next few months :)

[mutingeFelixo]

the keyboard is very good but seems the ability to change colour from application to application was removed...it will be cool if we had that option from the older version

[Zinoujoker]

good work 👏 keep up 😃👍

[Zinoujoker]

keep up updates! 👍

[NgnVhung]

Very good
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