9" iPad issues

[snomos]

• [x] keyboard too high, covers most of screen in landscape mode, especially four-row keyboards
• [x] keys too large compared to Apple's in landscape mode
• [x] letters too small in landscape mode

[snomos]

For comparison, here's the Apple keyboard for Nynorsk:

And our north Sámi keyboard:

[dylanhand]

@snomos It looks like this is because some keyboards are defined to have 4 rows on 9" iPads instead of 3 (like Apple's).

For example: https://github.com/giellalt/keyboard-mdf/blob/main/mdf.kbdgen/layouts/mdf.yaml#L57-L63C99

If you want some divvun keyboards to have 4 rows instead of the standard 3, they are necessarily going to be taller and cover more of the screen than Apple's keyboards.

Was it intended to define some of these keyboards as having 4 rows on 9" iPads?

If intentional, I can look into making the keys a bit smaller in height so slightly less of the screen is covered. However this will probably only save about 50px if we want key size to stay consistent with Apple's.

[snomos]

The fourth row is intentional, the languages in question have pretty large alphabets. But even the north Sami keyboard (three rows) takes one more text line than a similar Apple keyboard, cf the screen shots above.

First make the key size and spacing similar to that of Apple's, and if the keyboard height still is too big we could reduce the key height iff the keyboard has four rows.

[dylanhand]

TL;DR:

• The Divvun keyboard is taller primarily because of our spelling suggestion bar.
• Our keys are slightly taller than Apple's, but only by a few pixels. Changing them will be nearly negligible on 3-row keyboards.
• The 4-row keyboard's key height is stretched for some reason - I can look into why.

The reason the Divvun 3-row keyboard is taller than Apple's is that we unfortunately have no way to put our spelling suggestion bar to the right of the undo/redo buttons like Apple does, so this portion of the keyboard is twice as tall to accommodate both.

The alternative to making room for our spelling suggestion bar by making the whole keyboard taller is to instead shrink all the keys to make room for it. The advantage is that it will be the same height as Apple's. The drawback is that key size will no longer be consistent with Apple's which may be off-putting for users used to the built-in keyboard.

When put side-by-side, our 3-row keyboard is just barely taller at the top of the third row of keys, approx 4-6px. So while our keys aren't exactly the same size as Apple's they're close enough that changing them won't be very noticeable.

Our 4-row keyboard however does seem a little stretched, so I can look into what's causing that. It looks like fixing key height of the 4-row keyboard will buy us about 20 pixels.

[snomos]

3-row keyboard: it is the totality of three differences compared to Apple's:

• Keys are a bit bigger
• inter-key space is smaller
• letter size is smaller

All this makes our keyboards look quite different from Apple's. Less balanced, less well proportioned.

IIRC this now only happens on the 9" iPad in landscape mode. Your earlier changes fixed all of this in other cases.

[dylanhand]

I pushed a build that shrinks 5+ row keyboards on 9" iPads by 50px. The result is our keys are slighly smaller than Apple's but I think it's not so much that it'll be off-putting. Have a look and let me know what you think. I haven't yet fixed the font size and other things - want to get the height right first.

Here's a screenshot that shows how the updated keyboard compares to Apple's and the original Divvun keyboard:

[snomos]

Much better!

[dylanhand]

Great! Will work on fonts and spacing next and we can always tweak the height if needed.

[snomos]

Font size looks great now, as well as overall keyboard height. But key size and spacing between keys is still quite different from Apple's, at least on my 9" iPad.

[snomos]

Here's what it looks like on my iPad (north Sámi to the left, Apple Norwegian to the right, build 162):

[dylanhand]

Just pushed a build that increases horizontal spacing on 9" iPads to match that of Apple's and adds a little more corner radius to match Apple's as well.

[snomos]

I think it looks great now. I consider the key size and spacing fixed. Cf the following screenshot with SMA to the left and NNO to the right:

For comparison, the full version of SMA:

And the full version of NNO:

[dylanhand]

Great :)

The last item remaining is height. The height of the keyboard is currently the same except for the extra space required for the spelling suggestion bar. Our options are:

1. Keep as is now. Keys are similar height to Apple's but our keyboard is slightly taller due to spelling suggestion bar.
2. Make height exactly the same as Apple's. This will result in keys being shorter than Apple's to make room for spelling suggestion bar.

[snomos]

There is a third variant: make the height something between 1. and 2. in your list. That is, make the keys shorter, but not as much, maybe half of what option 2. would give. That would probably keep the proportions ok, and at the same time give us some more vertical space.

But maybe try option 2. first, ie make the total height about the same as Apple's, and see how bad or good that is.

[dylanhand]

Here's a screenshot of option 2 - having the keyboard the same height as Apple's but with scrunched keys:

Here it is next to Apple's:

[snomos]

Option 2 looks good! We'll try that one, and let more people test 🙂

[dylanhand]

Ok I just pushed a build with those changes. I also adjusted the space of the key and alt key label so they don't overlap. You'll see that keys are quite a bit smaller than the native keyboards, but take it for a spin and let me know what you think.

[snomos]

So far the adjusted height feels and looks like an improvement. One thing is still not fixed regarding keyboard height: the four row ones. Cf the following screenshot, with SMS to the left, and SMA to the right:

[dylanhand]

Here's a slightly shorter 4-row keyboard. Is this more what you had in mind? If not please let me know how you'd like it to look.

[snomos]

It does not look much shorter, on the contrary: if you imagine removing the suggestion line, the top of the keyboard should be along the top of the Apple keyboard to the right. But there is more to remove on the left than just the suggestions.

Another test: The top of the third row from the bottom (the one starting with 'a') on the Apple keyboard hits the mid of the keys on the fourth row to the left in the screen shot four comments back. In your latest screen shot above it does not.

All in all, it does not look shorter 🙂

[dylanhand]

Ok, I understand how you'd like it to look. I purposely didn't remove that much because, since this keyboard has an extra row, that will make keys quite small. Will shorten even more and push a build soon.

[snomos]

Mm, it is all about finding the correct balance between key height and overall keyboard height 🙂

[dylanhand]

It's been updated so the top of the keys meet the top of the keys on Apple's keyboard. Pushing a build now.

[snomos]

Thanks for the update @dylanhand, this hits the right balance between key size and keyboard height for the keyboards with an extra row 🙂

[dylanhand]

Great! This can be closed then?

[snomos]

Yes, this can be closed.