This is an attempt to integrate changes / improvements into OpenBoard that have been sitting around for a long time due to low dev activity. Might end up on F-Droid...
This is mostly a development version. On updates there may be changes that reset some settings. Consider all releases as beta quality at best.
- Allow loading Glide typing library
- not included in the app, as there is no compatible open source library
- can be extracted from GApps packages (swypelibs), or downloaded here
- Multilingual typing
- Load external dictionaries
- get them here, or in the experimental section (quality may vary)
- additional dictionaries for emojis or scientific symbols can be used to provide suggestions ("emoji search")
- note that for Korean layouts, suggestions only work using this dictionary, the tools in the dictionary repository are not able to create working dictionaries
- Adjust keyboard themes (style and colors)
- can follow the system's day/night setting on Android 10+ (and on some versions of Android 9)
- Split keyboard (if the screen is large enough)
- Number row
- Number pad
- Show all available extra characters on long pressing a key
Hidden functionality
Features that may go unnoticed
- Long pressing the clipboard key (the optional one in suggestion strip) pastes system clipboard contents
- Long pressing keys in the suggestion strip toolbar pins them to the suggestion strip
- Long-press comma to access clipboard view, emoji view, one-handed mode, settings, or switch language
- emoji view and language switch will disappear if you have the corresponding key enabled
- for some layouts it's not the comma-key, but the key at the same position (e.g. it's
qfor Dvorak layout)
- Press the incognito icon to get the toolbar (probably only hidden if you use force incognito mode)
- Sliding key input: swipe from shift to another key to type a single uppercase key
- also works for the
?123key to type a single symbol from the symbols keyboard, and for related keys
- also works for the
- Long-press a suggestion in suggestion strip to show more suggestions, and a delete button to remove this suggestion
- Swipe up from a suggestion to open more suggestions, and release on the suggestion to select it
- You can add dictionaries by opening them in a file explorer
- only works with content-uris and not with file-uris, meaning that it may not work with some file explorers
- Debug APK only
- Long-press a suggestion to show the source dictionary
- Debug settings in advanced preferences, though not very useful except for dumping dictionaries into the log
- When the app crashes, you will be asked whether you want crash logs when you open the settings
- For users doing manual backups with root access: starting at Android 7, the shared preferences file is not in the default location, because the app is using device protected storage. This is necessary so the settings can be read before the device is unlocked, e.g. at boot.
- file is located in
/data/user_de/0/<package_id>/shared_prefs/, though this may depend on the device and Android version
- file is located in
- Debug version can be installed along OpenBoard
- Allow users to add and replace built-in dictionaries
- modified / improved from openboard-team/openboard#569 and openboard-team/openboard#578
- some AOSP dictionaries are available here
- experimental dictionaries with next-word suggestions created from sentence lists are also available, but they may contain unwanted words, and may be missing other features
- dictionary files starting with "main_" replace the built-in dictionary for the language, all other names work as add-on dictionaries
- emoji dictionaries can be used to get emoji suggestions
- Fixes / improvements regarding suggestions
- Remove suggestions by long pressing on suggestion strip while the more suggestions popup is open (suggestions get re-added if they are entered again)
- Allow using contacts for suggestions
- several small adjustments and fixes
- Reduce amount of unwanted automatic space insertions, openboard-team/openboard#576
- Add multi-lingual typing, slightly modified from openboard-team/openboard#586, openboard-team/openboard#593
- Allow loading an external library to enable gesture typing, openboard-team/openboard#3
- based on wordmage's work
- tested with Google libraries and others (when building with the rename)
- Theming: allow adjusting keyboard colors, openboard-team/openboard#124
- Optionally make the navigation bar follow current theme, Helium314#4
- Allow defining day/night themes
- Remove suggestions by long pressing on suggestion strip while the more suggestions popup is open, openboard-team/openboard#106
- suggestions get re-added if they are entered again
- Optionally add typed words to system personal dictionary
- Improve issues with emoji deletion (still happens with delete gesture), Helium314#22
- Add Unicode 15 emojis, Helium314#25
- Better currency selection, Helium314#21 / https://github.com/Helium314/openboard/commit/0d1106649f95ecbd7d8f6d950428547666059564
- Reduce space between keys, with option to use old values, Helium314#8
- Fix number row not split in split keyboard view, Helium314#27
- Fix issue with spell checker incorrectly flagging words before a period as wrong on newer Android versions, openboard-team/openboard#679
- maybe not properly fixed, this causes some other issues
- Fix always-dark settings on some Android versions, Helium314#69
- Fix bug with space before word being deleted in some apps / input fields, https://github.com/Helium314/openboard/commit/ce0bf06545c4547d3fc5791cc769508db0a89e87
- Allow using auto theme on some devices with Android 9
- Add number pad
- Overhauled language settings
- Updated translations
- Open dictionary files with the app
- Add more options to the language switch key
- Add/change pre-defined themes
- Internal clean up (xml files, unused resources and classes)
- even after a lot of work here, the current state look rather messy, with many useless and duplicate entries
- work through _todo_s in code
- Make suggestion removal functionality more discoverable
- Better detection when to separate words and when not (e.g. detection of email addresses and URLs)
- Fix some bugs
- especially the spell checker issue Helium314#55
- "partial" multi-character codepoint deletion with delete gesture (e.g. for emojis), Helium314#22
Once above is done, we can think about properly releasing the app. First just in this repository, and later on F-Droid. This would include renaming the app and the package, changing the icon and using a localization tool (most likely weblate).
- more customizable theming
- improved / less bad suggestions in some cases
- add emojis to user history, to be used for next word suggestions
- sliding key input for numpad and emojis (like
?123and shift sliding input) - updated suggestion strip, maybe add tools or make the suggestions scroll
Join our [matrix] channel here.
Whether you encountered a bug, or want to see a new feature in OpenBoard, you can contribute to the project by opening a new issue here. Your help is always welcomed !
Before opening a new issue, be sure to check the following :
- Does the issue already exist ? Make sure a similar issue has not been reported by browsing existing issues.
- Is the issue still relevant ? Make sure your issue is not already fixed in the latest version of OpenBoard.
- Did you use the issue template ? It is important to make life of our kind contributors easier by avoiding issues that miss key informations to their resolution.
Please avoid opening issues to ask for a release date, for PR reviews/merges, for more activity on the project, or worth for more contributors. If you have any interrogations on these topics, read this comment from issue #619.
You can help in translating OpenBoard in your language through our Weblate project.
To create or update a dictionary for your language, you can use this tool. You will need a wordlist, as described here. The output .dict file must be put in res/raw, and its wordlist in dictionaries.
For your dictionary to be merged into OpenBoard, you must provide the wordlist you used, as well as its license if any.
OpenBoard project is based on Gradle and Android Gradle Plugin. To get started, you'll just need to install Android Studio, and import project 'from Version Control / Git / Github' by providing this git repository URL (or git SSH URL).
Once everything got setted up correctly, you're ready to go !
OpenBoard is a complex application, when contributing, you must take a step back and make sure your contribution :
- Uses already in-place mechanism and take advantage of them. In other terms, does not reinvent the wheel or uses shortcuts that could alter the consistency of the existing code.
- Has the lowest footprint possible. OpenBoard code has been written by android experts (AOSP/Google engineers). It has been tested and runned on millions of devices. Thus, existing code will always be safer than new code. The less we alter existing code, the more OpenBoard will stay stable. Especially in the input logic scope.
- Does not bring any non-free code or proprietary binary blobs. This also applies to code/binaries with unknown licenses. Make sure you do not introduce any closed-source library from Google.
- Complies with the user privacy principle OpenBoard follows.
In addition to previous elements, OpenBoard must stick to F-Droid inclusion guidelines.
In no particular order, here is the non-exhaustive list of known wanted features :
-
Updated emoji support - MaterialYou (M3) support
-
One-handed mode feature - Android autofill support
-
Clipboard history feature - Text navigation/selection panel
- Multi-locale typing
- Emoji search
- Emoji variant saving
- Glide typing
Keyboards content is often a complex concatenation of data from global to specific locales. For example, additional keys of a given key, also known as 'more keys' in code, are determined by concatenating infos from : common additional keys for a layout (eg. numbers), global locale (eg. common symbols) and specific locale (eg. accents or specific letters).
To edit these infos, you'll need to generate the KeyboardTextsTable.java file. To do so :
- Make your modifications in tools/make-keyboard-text/src/main/resources/values-YOUR LOCALE.
- Generate the new version of KeyboardTextsTable.java by running Gradle task 'makeText' :
./gradlew tools:make-keyboard-text:makeText
See make-emoji-keys tool README.
OpenBoard project is licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0.
Permissions of this strong copyleft license are conditioned on making available complete source code of licensed works and modifications, which include larger works using a licensed work, under the same license. Copyright and license notices must be preserved. Contributors provide an express grant of patent rights.
See repo's LICENSE file.