<space><punctuation> gets auto-corrected to <punctuation><space>

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Type a phrase followed by an emoticon (e.g. "This bug makes me sad :(")
2. Note how the colon and space switch places (e.g. "This bug makes me sad: (")

What is the expected behavior? What do you see instead?
I expect the keyboard to leave the punctuation as I typed it, rather than 
"correct" it to something I didn't mean.  Usually when I use ":", ";", etc. I 
am typing an emoticon -- in fact, I use them for emoticons more frequently than 
for their proper English uses. :)

What version of Hacker's Keyboard are you using? (See "Debug" section at
the bottom of the app's Settings menu.)
On what phone or tablet?

Hacker's Keyboard 1.31.1311 065ed34b811c
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 running CyanogenMod 9 snapshot 2011-03-30 (Ice Cream 
Sandwich)

If applicable, does this affect the 4-row or 5-row layout, or both? Which
language(s)?
I have only tested with the 5-row layout.

Please provide any additional information below.
This behavior seems to be tied to the auto-complete setting.  If I disable 
auto-complete, I get the correct behavior (i.e. the punctuation stays where it 
is supposed to).  However, I lose all the other benefits of having 
auto-complete turned on.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by des.siam...@gmail.com on 5 Apr 2012 at 6:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Yes, this is currently tied to the autocomplete setting. If you set it to show 
suggestions but not autocomplete, the punctuation will be entered as you type 
it.

The punctuation swap is kind of necessary since otherwise you'd end up with 
"word ," instead of "word, " when typing. For ':' and ';', it's unfortunately 
ambiguous what the user intended.

Unfortunately this is a rather hairy code area where I don't really understand 
the original author's intent, and my previous attempts to make changes there 
took several tries to get right. 

I could look into adding a separate option to control the punctuation space 
swap, for example making the list of swap-eligible keys editable, but I'm 
curious which other autocomplete benefits you're interested in keeping. 
Generally my impression was that people who want the phone to not change input 
and stick to what they typed would keep autocomplete off.

Original comment by Klaus.We...@gmail.com on 9 Apr 2012 at 10:38

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I think if I type an explicit space (using the spacebar), it makes sense to 
leave the characters as-is, since that's most likely what I intended to write 
in the first place.  If a space is inserted via auto-complete, then I didn't 
explicitly ask for it, so it's probably okay to swap.  You probably don't even 
need an extra setting for this, though I certainly wouldn't mind one.

I like auto-complete just for correcting words; since software keyboards in 
general are terribly inaccurate, it lets me fat-finger my way through a 
sentence and get something that's still mostly-correct.  It's just when I add 
the emoticon at the end of the sentence that I have a problem. :)

Original comment by des.siam...@gmail.com on 12 Apr 2012 at 7:01

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Unfortunately, in auto-complete mode the spacebar doesn't just insert spaces, 
it effectively means "auto complete/correct the current word and auto-insert a 
space after that", and there's no clear way to tell if the user meant to type 
an explicit space.

If you want the space bar to just insert spaces unconditionally, you need to 
switch to suggestion mode without auto-complete, and tap the suggestions to do 
completions/corrections on demand.

Original comment by Klaus.We...@gmail.com on 13 Apr 2012 at 12:27

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I can't use auto correct, it makes my typing a worse mess. I can't use the 
latest release due to the changes in punctuation handling. So I reverted. It 
was slowing me down just to use punctuation, when it had been the fastest and 
most amazing keyboard I've ever used.

It's wanting a comma after choosing a suggested word. Which I do a lot, 
apparently.

What happened to the adding a space after typing a comma? 

Original comment by rfre...@gmail.com on 11 Aug 2012 at 2:09