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Improved keyboard support for several languages - FinQwerty


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There is a nice app, that now supports the Pro1 keyboard. FinQwerty improving the functionality.

I have used test-versions of it for months for both QWERTY and QWERTZ, and it works just great!

See the current layouts here http://android.onse.fi/finqwerty/#pro1, here a few examples

Capture.PNG.d029b2415b989236aad50cdc9431adee.PNG

 

It is (currently) especially great for those that wants to use the physical QWERTZ for standard US or for Scandinavian languages on either QWERTZ or QWERTY

 

UPDATE:

The authour @Anssi Hannula has added more layouts, including Czech, US-International, and improved version of the German for QWERTZ and US for QWERTY also, as the stock version of those currently oddly ignores shift on the non-letter keys. And who knows he might be persuaded to do other layouts too.

It is open source, and no ads or the like, so you might want to check the Donate button and 'give him a beer'....

 

Notice the slightly odd "None" 'language' offered by FinQwerty, the purpose of that is to offer the exact same untampered stock thing as no tick-boxes selected. BUT this can be combined if you use more than one language. e.g. Danish+None. (This was very useful before the improved US for qwertY was added)

 

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  • 1 month later...

I decided to give FinQWERTY a try for English.  Although I like it, it doesn't work right or solve any issues for me, so this is an opinion of why it isn't useful for me in its current implementation, doesn't mean others won't like it.  I downloaded from play store; although described as open source it's not on f-droid (although is on git).

First thing is - US International has dead keys by default.  One thing this means is I can't use apostrophe normally.  So this eliminates this layout for me as I have no need for dead keys, I rarely type accented characters besides é and get that without using dead keys.  On my PC I use US International without dead keys, just to get the 3rd level keys with right-alt.  However I still tested my most commonly used 3rd level characters on the finqwerty implementation (including é), and they were as expected for the first few, but fn-1 gives me ¡ instead of ¹ I expected.  On keyboard, its the ¡ that needs shift, so backwards on phone, I think this is just a mistake that author could easily correct.   I saw it said fn+ctrl could be used instead of fn+shift, but that didnt work for me, at least not on the right side... 

I then just tried regular US layout.  Slash is supposed to be on the old ` key.  I tried it and it doesnt work.  Then testing multiple apps, I see other behavior varies between apps.  For example in Termux.

I also couldn't wake with Esc, or Sym .  I liked that Esc was supposed to become Esc, and using Sym to replace the wake functionality seemed good if it worked, but seems it doesn't.  I do regularly use wake on keypress and need at least one key to work.

This different behavior in different apps problem also happens when no layout is selected (as fxtec recommends) and is resolved by selecting a regular (non-finqwerty) layout as I've noted in other threads, and I think this is the solution I'll stick with for now.  I'd be happy to try it again if a US-Intl w/o dead keys existed with ¹ and ¡ swapped back to standard us-intl, and wake on keypress implemented, and it behaved the same in all apps.  I'd also like a dedicated slash key on US Intl like you did for regular US.

In fact, if it were completely up to me, I'd make (right) Fn into slash/questionmark, make Esc into Esc, and make the Sym key behave as right-alt for the 3rd level symbols, and wake on any keypress. 

image.png

 

 

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right, but when using finqwerty-us-intl, apostrophe becomes a dead key. So if I use apostrophe normally as in English for contractions or possession, i would have to type an extra space, which I'm not used to and don't want to learn as I don't need dead keys in normal usage.

Edited by Craig
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[For those not familiar, a dead key is a key that doesnt advance when you type it, imagine a typewriter and typing é, you type ' first then e and it comes out é.  but if you just want ' you have to type ' then space.]

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5 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

I think he tried to get as close as possible to the one in wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#US-International

Yeah, that shows ¡ without shift, like he did in finqwerty.  My pc keyboard definatately requires shift for both regular and upside down exlamation, they're opposite of that, weird...

Edited by Craig
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Just now, Craig said:

Yeah, that shows ¡ without shift, like he did in finqwerty.  My pc keyboard definatately requires shift for both regular and upside down, they're opposite of that, weird...

Could make good sense if the superscript one was lower, like the 2 and 3, so could merely be a bug in wiki....

@Anssi Hannula (just mentioning to make sure he sees this)

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Just downloaded the app, but it's missing exactly what I needed (German for QWERTY). 😕

I'm just looking for a way to enter German special characters (ä ö ü ß) by long-pressing the respective button (a o u s). Every QWERTY phone I bought from the US in the past supported this out of the box. I would've thought fxtec would've at least provided an app or system setting to customize the keyboard's functionality to your liking.

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5 minutes ago, shani said:

Just downloaded the app, but it's missing exactly what I needed (German for QWERTY). 😕

I'm just looking for a way to enter German special characters (ä ö ü ß) by long-pressing the respective button (a o u s). Every QWERTY phone I bought from the US in the past supported this out of the box. I would've thought fxtec would've at least provided an app or system setting to customize the keyboard's functionality to your liking.

Have a look at US-Int. There you can enter accented characters by pressing the yellow arrow and a button (it is the same on US-Int on PC). So ä is yellow-Arrow + q, Ä is yellow-arrow + Q. ü is yellow-arrow + y  and ö is + p.

It takes some time to get used to it but it is faster than holding down a key until something happens 😄

Edited by Doktor Oswaldo
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Oh ok, thanks! I had just set it to that but didn't think there were shortcuts like those.

Pretty counterintuitive to map them to arbitrary keys like q and y and p though. 😆

But it works, nice! Arrow button + s = ß

Edited by shani
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16 minutes ago, shani said:

Oh ok, thanks! I had just set it to that but didn't think there were shortcuts like those.

Pretty counterintuitive to map them to arbitrary keys like q and y and p though. 😆

But it works, nice! Arrow button + s = ß

The problem as always are these damn French 😄
yellow arrow + a is á  and e is é and so on...
 

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18 hours ago, EskeRahn said:

How odd, it is not dead here. If I use it combined with Fn it is dead though

Different apps behave differently, another thing I noted.  Try termux, apostrophe behaves dead in there (with finqwerty-us-intl)

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3 minutes ago, Craig said:

Different apps behave differently, another thing I noted.  Try termux, apostrophe behaves dead in there (with finqwerty-us-intl)

Maybe he is using Fallback? similar to the Esc, if the app does not supports Escape, it falls back to Back

(Haven't got Termux installed)

But I think we need @Anssi Hannula in the loop here. 😉

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14 minutes ago, Craig said:

Different apps behave differently, another thing I noted.  Try termux, apostrophe behaves dead in there (with finqwerty-us-intl)

He did change the default mapping, so non waiting ' is not where waiting whatever was.  Have a look here
https://github.com/anssih/finqwerty/issues/2

This is maybe your issue.

Edited by Doktor Oswaldo
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Yeah it seems the keymap diagrams are ahead of the release version.  For example the sym to wake was committed 9 days ago, after last google play update, someone just pointed out to me.  So I'll wait for a new version to try it again.

https://github.com/anssih/finqwerty/commit/2505c7e35aa72d19df0ca06a92deb4cb45751843

@Anssi Hannula By the way, why not make SYM into KEYCODE_BACK (as opposed to keycode_wakeup) so it serves dual purposes.  (We already have a home key with Fx.)

 

 

Edited by Craig
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On 1/6/2020 at 6:36 PM, Craig said:

Yeah it seems the keymap diagrams are ahead of the release version.  For example the sym to wake was committed 9 days ago, after last google play update, someone just pointed out to me.  So I'll wait for a new version to try it again.

https://github.com/anssih/finqwerty/commit/2505c7e35aa72d19df0ca06a92deb4cb45751843

@Anssi Hannula By the way, why not make SYM into KEYCODE_BACK (as opposed to keycode_wakeup) so it serves dual purposes.  (We already have a home key with Fx.)

Usually he has some test-versions before releasing a new version, but there could be a delay between what he releases and what you see on the Android Market. I have had several cases where the same app is not available at the same time on two or more devices on search for updates. Even the same model on the same net. Usually levels out in hours.

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On 1/6/2020 at 12:36 PM, Craig said:

Yeah it seems the keymap diagrams are ahead of the release version.  For example the sym to wake was committed 9 days ago, after last google play update, someone just pointed out to me.  So I'll wait for a new version to try it again.

https://github.com/anssih/finqwerty/commit/2505c7e35aa72d19df0ca06a92deb4cb45751843

@Anssi Hannula By the way, why not make SYM into KEYCODE_BACK (as opposed to keycode_wakeup) so it serves dual purposes.  (We already have a home key with Fx.)

 

 

You can always download the latest version here.

https://github.com/anssih/finqwerty/releases

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  • 4 weeks later...
1 minute ago, octane said:

Can someone tell me how can I switch between the layouts. I have US keyboard and cyrillic layout (russian for now, but on my N900 it was the same as the bulgarian) setted up, but I don't know how to switch it. Can someone help me?

Press ctrl + spacebar to switch between layouts.

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On 1/31/2020 at 12:53 AM, 3zet said:

I'm curious if there's a chance to add Fn+Esc = back button. Because back is quite usable in Android. 

Esc itself is a back button in some situations. But you can also use Keyboard/Button Mapper to make a Fn+Esc combination to work as a back button system wide. I tested it and it is working great.

Screenshot_20200205-074705.thumb.png.05523ceb5020914f480744c8e278f628.png

Edited by FlyingAntero
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