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fabian9

macrumors 65816
Nov 28, 2007
1,147
146
Bristol, UK
Is this already available for JBed iPads? It might give me a reason to JB again for the first time in about a year or so!
 

JustMartin

macrumors 6502a
Feb 28, 2012
787
271
UK
I don’t know why you’re being voted down for this. You’re absolutely right. As a German, I make use of the swiping up gesture on certain lettres to get a special character. This would likely sometimes interfere with the idea to swipe up if you want to go up with the curser.

But, it could be implemented without upward swipes, surely? I use upward swipe for things like quote characters. But, sideways to move cursor, shift sideways to select would be a good start, then maybe a dedicated area of keyboard not used for character shortcuts for up and down?
 

lokey

macrumors regular
Jul 3, 2003
144
44
Love the idea but the implementation may need some work so not to interfere with current functionality.

I think keeping the "drag-able" area confined to the Spacebar this might work well. All dragging starts from the Spacebar and can go off from there if going up. This unfortunately means you can,t drag the insertion point down, but that is a trade off.
 

jclardy

macrumors 601
Oct 6, 2008
4,151
4,350
This would break the keyboard for many non-English languages.

Really hoping Apple won't implement this. Sorry.

How so? I am asking because I really don't know, do they already use swipe gestures?

This still allows for you to tap and hold on a key to get the other "forms" of a letter on the US keyboard, for things like accented letters.

EDIT: Just saw the other reply about upward swipes. So yeah that would interfere, but I feel there is still a way to implement this without interfering with current gestures.
 

Boghog

macrumors member
May 7, 2007
89
0
As a German, I make use of the swiping up gesture on certain lettres to get a special character. This would likely sometimes interfere with the idea to swipe up if you want to go up with the curser.
But it isn't a swiping up gesture, is it? It's a hold-for-one-second-then-swipe-up-and-slightly-to-the-right gesture (which btw was way better before iOS4 when it automatically preselected the most likely character (e.g. in German äöüß) from the list). This in itself is pretty much broken for languages like German where these characters are really common (and other languages I suspect). At least on the iPad there should be enough space for a standard German (or French or Turkish etc.) keyboard.
As far as this concept is concerned, I'd love to see something like this implemented and I don't see how it could break non-English keyboards at all.
 

aross99

macrumors 68000
Dec 17, 2006
1,540
1
East Lansing, MI
This would be amazing. It's way too hard to edit text in IOS.

There is already a Setting to enable/disable some gestures, so this could be incorporated into that, so people who don't like it could turn it off.

For the rest of us, it would be a fantastic addition...
 

gri

macrumors 6502a
Jul 17, 2004
841
175
New York City, aka Big Apple
I don’t know why you’re being voted down for this. You’re absolutely right. As a German, I make use of the swiping up gesture on certain lettres to get a special character. This would likely sometimes interfere with the idea to swipe up if you want to go up with the curser.

You don't swipe up, you hold the key for a fraction longer and than the special characters appear. I don't think this system would interfere with it.
 

Night Spring

macrumors G5
Jul 17, 2008
14,612
7,790
Why not something more simple, like add arrow keys to the on-screen keyboard. Not everything has to be gestures.
 

Night Spring

macrumors G5
Jul 17, 2008
14,612
7,790
I thought that was about as simple as you could get. Arrow keys would slow down editing

How would arrow keys slow down editing? It's what we use on physical keyboards, after all.

And no gesture is "simple," in the sense that they have to be explained and learned. The only gesture I've found simple and intuitive so far is the "pinch to zoom." All other gestures are arbitary and therefore unintuitive, and hard to discover and remember. Arrow keys, anyone who sees them will know how to use them without explanation. With the suggested gestures, I can see people getting confused when the cursor suddenly moves when they accidentally swipe over the keys without intending to.
 

Matthew Yohe

macrumors 68020
Oct 12, 2006
2,200
142
But it isn't a swiping up gesture, is it? It's a hold-for-one-second-then-swipe-up-and-slightly-to-the-right gesture (which btw was way better before iOS4 when it automatically preselected the most likely character (e.g. in German äöüß) from the list).

You don't swipe up, you hold the key for a fraction longer and than the special characters appear. I don't think this system would interfere with it.

Yes, you can hold keys, but on the iPad you can also swipe up. Just try it on the question mark or the comma key.

Keyboards in non-english languages let you do this with letters that have diacritics on top of them. (Umlauts etc...)
 

ncaissie

macrumors 6502a
Dec 1, 2011
665
6
That’s cool but if you hold two fingers on the section of text you want to highlight it will do it pretty fast. I like the shift drag also. And I typically tap a word twice to highlight it..

----------

Unrelated: Why the obnoxious music blasting me when I load the video?

Because justin bieber is copyrighted. :eek:
 

APlotdevice

macrumors 68040
Sep 3, 2011
3,145
3,861
But, it could be implemented without upward swipes, surely? I use upward swipe for things like quote characters. But, sideways to move cursor, shift sideways to select would be a good start, then maybe a dedicated area of keyboard not used for character shortcuts for up and down?

The Japanese Kana keyboard uses sideway swipes. (also it doesn't have a shift key in the normal input mode)
 
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Boghog

macrumors member
May 7, 2007
89
0
Yes, you can hold keys, but on the iPad you can also swipe up. Just try it on the question mark or the comma key.

Keyboards in non-english languages let you do this with letters that have diacritics on top of them. (Umlauts etc...)
Wow! I didn't know that. I just tried it and it worked. But it works differently from the hold-and-swipe-up gesture because it doesn't give a choice of symbols, it just picks the Umlauts (in German, that is). Brilliant.
Now I only wish my iPhone would do that because I type more on it than on the iPad.
Thanks for the pointer.
 

verniesgarden

macrumors 65816
May 29, 2007
1,277
1,080
Saint Louis, Mo
I'd *love* this, but, just to play devil's advocate a bit:

1) This would likely interfere with the existing tap/hold function of the keyboard (most keys will offer other characters if you tap and hold on them). Not everyone (especially most of Apple's iPad demographic) is as quick about things, so they could easily trigger the foreign character picker accidentally. It's definitely not "Apple-ish" for the "other characters" selector to pop up on a key while you were trying to select text.

2) The two-finger gesture wouldn't really work non-iPad iOS devices, because most (IMO) users just type with their thumbs. It could just be an extra gesture on the iPad, though.

That's all I've got. Now make this happen please apple kthx.


Apple loves multitouch gesters, especially on the iPad, i see this be a great addition to that. and for the folks that don't like/want it, they can turn off gestures. simple solution. But i can see it not interfering with special characters, the delay on special characters is pretty long in my opinion, but they could make it a brief bit longer and solved.
 

shurcooL

macrumors 6502a
Jan 24, 2011
938
117
As usual, some people seem to really want this feature, and some people really don't.

There's a nice compromise: be able to turn the feature on or off in the Keyboard settings.


Boom. Everyone wins.
Boom. If this were the solution to all problems, you would end up with 1500 options in your iPad to configure.

You buy a new iPad and it'd take days, weeks to go through all the settings and set them on/off. Finding what you want to change becomes harder as there more settings to seep through.

More options = also bad.

Edit: Unless you redesign how "settings" are done in the first place. See Choices in Software Settings concept idea.
 

2 Replies

macrumors regular
Apr 26, 2010
180
0
I've submitted feature requests before.
The response EVERY TIME, is a blunt email message saying that they don't accept feature requests. :mad:
 

APlotdevice

macrumors 68040
Sep 3, 2011
3,145
3,861
Apple loves multitouch gesters, especially on the iPad, i see this be a great addition to that. and for the folks that don't like/want it, they can turn off gestures. simple solution. But i can see it not interfering with special characters, the delay on special characters is pretty long in my opinion, but they could make it a brief bit longer and solved.

It might not interfere with the tap and hold feature, but it would with the quick swipe feature (or whatever it's called) found on certain keyboards. There is no delay there.
 

2 Replies

macrumors regular
Apr 26, 2010
180
0
Boom. If this were the solution to all problems, you would end up with 1500 options in your iPad to configure.

You buy a new iPad and it'd take days, weeks to go through all the settings and set them on/off. Finding what you want to change becomes harder as there more settings to seep through.

More options = also bad.

Edit: Unless you redesign how "settings" are done in the first place. See Choices in Software Settings concept idea.

I have a degree in Computer Science and have studied usability and interface design for over a decade.
I'm going to tell you right now that more options is NEVER bad.
(As you imply, it's the organization (or lack thereof) that can be bad.)

Give the options. ALWAYS give the user the options.
If someone doesn't want to use them, they don't have to. That's what defaults are for.
Just be sure to spend PLENTY of time to organize them.
The best settings options I've seen on a mobile device (private internal implementation) had a search feature for the settings so the user didn't need to know where a setting was, but could easily search for it.

Dumbing down a piece of software or a device is bad.
Removing options that allow users to use the software or device how they please is bad.
Forcing everyone to use it exactly the same is bad.
Defining use-cases by the most LIMITED purpose is bad.
 

Scooz

Suspended
Apr 9, 2012
339
348
The word Genius, once badly crippled by Apple, now seems to have reached its maximum inflational state in this forum.

Watch it collapse.

The method described is quite exactly how you move and select were handled in WebOS from the very beginning.*

Pop.

*(Except for the "fast" select with two fingers, since in WebOS you also can move the cursor up an down with the same method.)
 
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