a hint for the Italian keyboard

[redsun82]

Hi, I'm a happy user of th app, thanks! Most of all I appreciate the constant development and updates, good job!

There is one thing that would be very useful in the Italian layout. In Italian the quotation mark ( ' ) is quite common. Right now the fastest way to type it is by long pressing c and then selecting it (as ç is another alternative symbol attached to c, even if in reality it is never used in Italian). This slows quite down typing.

I noticed that the French keyboard layouts have ' as an additional key in the second row. I think the Italian layout would benefit from having that too. Either that, or suppressing ç which, though present in the standard Italian keyboard layout, is almost non-existent in Italian use (mainly for rare words directly coming from French) . This would make ' a direct long press of c...

On a side note, still concerning the quotation mark. In Italian ' marks an elision of a final vowel, and it requires no space after it (e.g. "quello" and "esempio" become "quell'esempio"). This messes up the dictionary, as for example "quell'esempio" is regarded as a whole (and clearly unknown) word. Would it be possible to set the quotation mark as a word separator, so that "quell'esempio" would appear to the spell checker as the two separate words "quell" and "esempio"? Or even better (but not necessary), quell' with the quotation mark and esempio?

Cheers!

[cyril]

I'll check what can be done for your second request, not sure it's easy

As for the layout, ok, I can change it to be like the french one

[cyril]

As for the layout, ok, I can change it to be like the french one

Done in the latest version

[redsun82]

sorry I did not thank you before, but here it is: thanks

It's great the development you're putting into this, I'm glad I bought!

As for the word suggestion, it's better now, it suggests the whole combinations (like "l'esempio"), maybe because I turned on the "learn as I type" feature. It's faster now.

One last thing and the Italian package would be perfect: a very common Italian word is "è" (that's "is"). Right now the only way to type it is by long press, as the single "e" does not show suggestions. Now, the problem is that "e" also is a common word (that's "and"). However I think it should at least show the two as suggestions (but still choose "e" by default). I've seen the French keyboard gives "à" as (default) suggestion for "a", so probably it is possible to give suggestions for single letters, I think? Actually I don't know (after the last update with HTC-like long press behaviour) if it's faster to long press and choose "è" or press "e" and then choose the right suggestion, but maybe having the two methods users could choose what's fastest for them.

And regarding "e" and "è", a last thing. The "e" long press default is "é" in Italian ("é" is even less frequent than "è") and "è" in French. I think it should be "3" like the alt-defaults of other (even accented) keys...

Cheers, and thanks again!

[cyril]

Hi
indeed it's possible to add "è" as a suggestion, but if I do this, it will imply that "è" will become the default suggestion instead of "e" (like "à" is the default suggestion for "a" in french). So I don't know what you prefer...

[redsun82]

Yes, I thought it could be a problem with respect to French. Isn't it possible to add both as suggestions giving priority to "e"?

If it's not (or it's too hard) then better leave things as they are. Maybe a very little thing that could do the trick is in the order of alt characters for "e". As I already said I think 3 should be the default: then if you make the order of characters "3, é, è" (rather than "3, è, é" as it is now) typing "è" would be a bit faster. It's easier to long press, wait for haptic feedback then go all the way to the right and then release, rather than having to move just enough as to reach the middle (thus having to rely on visual feedback too). Yeah, that's a little thing, but IMHO it could help. As for "é", in Italian it's not only a bit rarer, it's also invariantly at the end of words, where word prediction has certainly already decided to use it, so the need to explicitly type it is practically non-existent.

thanks for the feedback!

[thtieig]

Hi guys,

Yep, I fully agree with redsun82 about the quotation ' as separator.
Now, every time you type something like "dall'anno, quell'altra, quest'estate, quest'altr'anno..." the prediction stops working because it can't recognise the word.
Actually, the ' is a real separator.
This fix/update could really improve the usage of the Italian layout.

Also, one suggestion about "è".
I don't know guys if you've never used a BlackBerry.
One step back: why I've bought this app?
- quick switch between English/Italian (just one click)
- Custom AutoText feature (like BlackBerry)

So... now... back to the original topic.
The simplest way to have "è" quickly is using the same trick used on the BlackBerry: if you type "ee", it will change it in "è". And with this keyboard you can do the same using Custom AutoText
Same with "xche --> perché", "affinche --> affinché", "xo --> però" etc...
You can also save your settings using the backup feature so... no issues in case of "reset to factory" of your phone

That's it