1049514 - Should be able to use multiple autocompletion dictionaries with one keyboard layout

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1046036

(Firefox OS Graveyard :: Gaia::Keyboard, defect)

Description

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

It appears that you can have at most one autocompletion dictionary and that dictionary has to match the layout. However, many people write multiple languages using one keyboard layout--typically English and another language using the layout for the non-English language if the non-English language uses the Latin script. To support these users, it should be possible to have two autocompletion dictionaries active at the same time.

Comment 1

[Jan Jongboom [:janjongboom] (inactive)]

I've had some thoughts about this as well, but I think it's gonna worsen suggestions very much. The keyboard should be able to detect the language you type in and then swap out the autocorrect. You don't want to mix 2 dictionaries.

Comment 2

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Yes, after the first couple of words, it probably makes sense to offer subsequent words in the same keyboard show/hide cycle in the same single language. Or even to offer a way to toggle between the dictionaries explicitly.

My main point is that the notion of toggling between *layouts* to swap between an English *dictionary* and a dictionary for a non-English Latin-script language makes no sense. For example, I want a Finnish *layout* to have keys for ä and ö to be able to efficiently type Finnish. When I type English, I don't want to change the layout, because it changes the number of keys per row, which moves the locations of the keys around. I want to keep using the Finnish layout (or at least a layout where letters a-z don't shift relative to their Finnish-keyboard locations) when typing English. My notion of where each Latin letter should be doesn't change when I write a different Latin-script language.

Comment 3

[Jan Jongboom [:janjongboom] (inactive)]

Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. Let's ask Rudy what his thoughts are.

Comment 4

[Rudy Lu [:rudyl] (inactive after 2015/7/3)]

If I understand correctly, we have the following 2 options to fulfill this requirement.
 1. To have a sophisticated way to analyze the context so that keyboard would show the suggestion in correct language.
    - I don't think this is easy, and not sure if there is any other platform has done this.
 2. To have a switch button on the keyboard, so that it could switch the languages for suggestion.
    Now that this will be a 1-to-many mapping from layout to dictionary languages.
    So, I could imagine the UI for configuration and switching would be way more complicated that we have right now, i.e. one-to-one mapping.

==
However, I am not a UX person, so let's see what Omega says about this. :)

Comment 5

[Omega Feng [:Omega] [:馮於懋]]

The better one is analyzing the context and use the correct dictionary automatically, but it seems hard to implement, and incomplete solution will cause bad UX.
To have one more switch button is not a good idea, that button takes same steps as IME switch button does.
I think we should make sure when we will have a good context analyzing solution and add this feature then.

Comment 6

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

(In reply to Rudy Lu [:rudyl] from comment #4)
> To have one more switch button is not a good idea, that button takes same steps as IME switch button 
> does.

There is no need for another button.

Now the layout switching UI has a button for switching e.g. between "fr" and "en", which changes both the layout and the dictionary. You should be able to pick one layout, e.g. "fr", and two dictionaries, e.g. "fr" and "en". Then there could still be just one button on the keyboard for toggling between "fr" and "en", but they'd just toggle the dictionary and leave the layout constant.

Conceptually, this is about locking in one Latin *layout* for all Latin-script *languages*. If you opt to lock to one Latin layout in the settings UI, you don't need two axes in the on-keyboard UI.

Comment 7

[Hubert Figuiere [:hub]]

Dupe of bug 1046036 ?

Comment 8

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

(In reply to Hubert Figuiere [:hub] from comment #7)
> Dupe of bug 1046036 ?

It seems like that bug is narrower (asking for French dictionary with non-azerty layout while this one ask for more than one dictionary with one layout).

Comment 9

[Hubert Figuiere [:hub]]

no it is the same thing. I was giving the practical example because I have no other example to give.