Anysoftkeyboard: [Feature Request] layout designer OR I'll do it myself

[sebas77]

Hi,

not a bug. I hate the default android layout, I consider it one of the biggest failure in the UX universally. I am bewildered by the fact that Google didn't think about giving us the chance to change the layout, nor I can find a keyboard that let me do so. There are a couple on the store, to be honest, but they are inferior. I finally found out this Anysoftkeyboard that while doesn't have the feature, is an open-source project, so potentially I could do it myself, while still having a fully-featured keyboard. If you are not planning to add the feature to change the layout (I understand is quite a bit of work), could you point me to which steps I should take to change the layout myself? I am a coder, although I have never worked on android, so you can be technical.

[AnXh3L0]

Hello there @sebas77,

What do you mean by layout changing? There is already a lot of layouts available for AnySoftKeyboard.

[sebas77]

They all follow the standard layout more or less, while instead I need to move away some keys. I have many problems with the space bar row. I constantly type.like.this because instead to push the way too short bar, I push the keys next to it that can be easily moved elsewhere. Let me know if I can do such a thing please.

[AnXh3L0]

Please check the settings menu, there's more than 8 layouts for ASK.

[sebas77]

I want to personalize the space bar (bottom) row in such a way there is just a special character (, with . when holding) and the space bar. I am not sure about the return key, but it may or not may be there (if it's not I would move it one row above) None of the present layouts are so radically different. If I am wrong, then I am not finding this option you are talking about.

P.S.: thank you for the quick replies

[papb]

I also want this feature, none of the currently available layouts really satisfy me. I wish we could configure it key by key, perhaps with a TOML file or something like that.

I also.type.like.this every.time...

[sebas77]

I feel you bro :D

[AnXh3L0]

This is a very much requested feature, to be able to customize both the top and bottom row via a layout file or something. You can see it here #1834 for example. I'm personally not an Android dev so I don't think I can help coding that, but if you are so kind as to help us implement it, that'd be greatly appreciated.

[sebas77]

sure I thought many time to do it from scratch, but I wouldn't be able to do it as feature complete as it is anykeyboard. Theoretically could be as simple as change an xml.

https://www.androidauthority.com/lets-build-custom-keyboard-android-832362/

If someone knows it already could be useful, otherwise I will try to find the time to dig in to it, the only problem I got is that I have never worked on an android, although the setup seems all right.

[menny]

PLEASE DO IT! I think this would be a great addition to AnySoftKeyboard, but I currently lack the bandwidth to do that.

The way the UI knows what to draw is by getting the list of keys from the keyboard object.
The keyboard object is defined here

Currently, the implementation is taking an XML resource file and parse it into a list of AnyKey objects. With a little juggling, you can change that to accept some other data format, or better, a factor instance.

[papb]

Similar to #1390, #1834 and #1987

[ccoreilly]

Should this be a customization option in the main ASK app or an addon that allows customization? If it is in the main app the custom keyboard layout should be selectable in the keyboard selection screen.
I could help, @sebas77 have you started with this feature yet?

[papb]

Should this be a customization option in the main ASK app or an addon that allows customization?

Can you clarify what you mean by this?

I was thinking of having in the ASK app interface the option of choosing a 'predefined keyboard layout' or a 'custom keyboard layout via TOML' (or another markup language, if preferred)

[nicoursi]

If I am right you are talking about bottom rows. There are plenty availaible now. If you try the latest dev version, you can try minimal no emoji bottom row, which I think is very close to what you are looking for. You can change bottom rows from settings -->UI-->Tweaks an more.
Have a look at this last Pull request to have a visual
#2148

If you want to add a new bottom row, you can have a look at the above pull request commits code to see how it is done and make a new one. This is the easiest, but you can still implement a new feature to allow the user to change a layout himself.