Gboard Double Sided Version | Hacker News Reader

Gboard Double Sided Version

github.com

94 pointsgnabgib46 comments

I get that this is one of their jokes, to get attention and for fun. But it would be great if Gboard itself was open source though. I could do a ton of improvements for myself at least. I love the slide / swipe typing gesture input mode in Gboard but it's needlessly closed source. There could be big privacy improvements and great features added. Maybe AnySoftKeyboard is good enough now, I'll check again.

Use it in GrapheneOS and block its Internet access completely to solve your privacy complains.

I'm working on a keyboard. What improvements would you make?

When I start typing a string that begins with "https://", disable autocorrect/auto capitalization. It gets frustrating having to fight the keyboard any time you type a url.

Yes, and if I type X, backspace, X, backspace, and click somewhere near X again... you'd better not say I clicked X!

I'd take a one-touch button to temporarily disable autocorrect/auto-capitalization. Either toggled or until next space.

I don't usually type the "https://" part if I'm spelling out a URL, and I type many more identifiers than URLs anyhow.

> I'd take a one-touch button to temporarily disable autocorrect/auto-capitalization. Either toggled or until next space.

AnySoftKeyboard¹ has this²; the button disappears with the suggestions but the setting only "sticks" until you dismiss the keyboard.

1: https://anysoftkeyboard.github.io

2: https://i.imgur.com/CE1xeGY.jpeg

I don't think your keyboard can help with that? All that stuff is being done by the operating system.

Maybe on iOS? On Android the keyboard app is fully in charge of autocorrect so they all behave a bit differently.

As a German, let me capitalize letters by pressing shift at the end of the word. Swiftkey had this feature. Afaik GBoard does not.

Do you mean capitalize the whole word you've just typed?

That's how Swiftkey works, yeah. If you put your cursor at the end of a word, hacker for example, pressing shift once gives Hacker as an autocorrect option, and a 2nd press gives HACKER.

-Use an old phone remotely as a wireless gesture typing keyboard (forwarding the keyboard I/O)

-Programmer mode with SSH sanity

-Custom tiny local language models for better, wiser, more funny suggestions that the end user could have full control of (the sky is the limit for this)

-Maybe I want to use my task list as context for typing faster, maybe I want a synced knowledge network

-Maybe I can want to search for "man" emoji and have it really work

-Maybe I want real time translation built in, using a custom endpoint running on my GPU or latest Whisper distilled model? Maybe a new one that can do Markdown sarcasm formatting?

I could go on and on.

Text remains a very powerful input and output. They're not as smart as everybody who could be hacking on it, people love hacking on keyboards, for good reason.

Gboard has many great features, privacy could even be one of them in the future! Swiping and it's custom models, that kinda know what weird topics I've typed, but not full GPT level, are pretty neat and make it worth considering, but hey, open source will get better and better. We live in an amazing time, with antitrust break up of Google being considered, open sourcing it and continuing to work on it with open source community could be a small win that could keep giving, just saying. Typed in on Gboard!

What's stopping you from taking the keyboard from AOSP as a base and applying all your cool features on top?

GP specifically called out (Swype-style) slide-typing, which is indeed not in the AOSP keyboard.

Google Japan has a long history of making joke keyboards like this. The linear one is one of my favorites.

extremely niche internet humor and im all here for it

Just to clarify are you talking about the lllong longgg single row keyboard?

Yes: https://g.co/____

Would love to see they tie it up to https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6-1Ue0FFrHY

Also check out the "promo" video for this https://youtu.be/EHqPrHTN1dU

False advertising.

This thing is only single-sided!

and, topologically speaking, it's equivalent to a coffee cup!

Because of the handle, you mean?

Yes, a cup without a handle is just a ball

apparently they are not equivalent: https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/math...

is it? isn’t a coffee cup equivalent to a torus? which is not equivalent to a mobius strip

torus and mobius strip are both genus 1

imagine inflating the mobius strip like a long balloon, so that it loses the edge

The genus is insufficient to determine if an object is equivalent to the other. Orientability distinguishes the mobius strip and the torus, a torus is orientable whereas a mobius strip is not. Therefore, topologically speaking they are not equivalent.

What is orientability? Why is the torus able but not the mobius strip?

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/math...

(good images and explanation here)

you can make a mobius strip with paper. then get a pencil and try to orient it in the mobius strip. that is, make it normal to the paper then move it around. you will see that if you go though the strip and go back to the starting point the pencil will be in the other direction. thus, the orientation is not continuous so the surface is not orientable

The "official" landing page from where this GitHub page is linked: g.co/double-sided = https://landing.google.co.jp/double-sided/ (the video is amazing, and many of the jokes carry over from Japanese in the English subtitles)

All of the keyboards:

    https://g.co/double-sided — (current) Gboard Double-Sided version (2024)
    https://g.co/CAPS — Gboard CAPS version (2023)
    https://g.co/_____ — Gboard Bar version (2022)
    https://g.co/yunomi — Gboard Teacup version (2021)
    https://g.co/---o — Gboard Spoon Bending Input version (2019)
    https://g.co/tegaki — Gboard Physical Handwriting version (2018)
    https://g.co/ooooo — Google Bubble Wrap version (2017)
    https://g.co/furikku — Google Physical Flick version (2016)
    https://g.co/___o — Google Party Horn version (2015)
    https://g.co/m9 — Google Lazy Tongs version (2014)
    https://g.co/patapata — Google Split-Flag version (2013)
    https://www.google.co.jp/ime/-.-.html — Google Morse version (2012)
    https://www.google.co.jp/landing/drumsetkeyboard — Google Drum set version (2010)

As actual links so people can click on them instead of needing to copy/paste:

https://g.co/double-sided — (current) Gboard Double-Sided version (2024)

https://g.co/CAPS — Gboard CAPS version (2023)

https://g.co/_____ — Gboard Bar version (2022)

https://g.co/yunomi — Gboard Teacup version (2021)

https://g.co/---o — Gboard Spoon Bending Input version (2019)

https://g.co/tegaki — Gboard Physical Handwriting version (2018)

https://g.co/ooooo — Google Bubble Wrap version (2017)

https://g.co/furikku — Google Physical Flick version (2016)

https://g.co/___o — Google Party Horn version (2015)

https://g.co/m9 — Google Lazy Tongs version (2014)

https://g.co/patapata — Google Split-Flag version (2013)

https://www.google.co.jp/ime/-.-.html — Google Morse version (2012)

https://www.google.co.jp/landing/drumsetkeyboard — Google Drum set version (2010)

Oh wow; everything needed to build the linear keyboard...

https://github.com/google/mozc-devices/blob/master/mozc-bar/...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G3DWHf1xX0

This is a Moebius strip. It's technically NOT double sided.

Is that not the joke?

I don't know, an actually double sided keyboard would be fun too. This might qualify: https://www.micwil.com/images/gallery/safetype_safetype_vert...

Slightly related: Does anyone know of a simple macropad that uses 2u or larger keys? I just want 4 or so larger keys!

Many (but not all) 2u keycaps will fit on a pair of switches.

Meanwhile, there were two other Googlers who won Nobel Prizes.

Their iOS app for Gboard has been abandoned for more than two years despite frequent crashes. I've tried to move off of it multiple times, but nothing yet seems to match its swipe to text or autocomplete/autocorrect suggestions.

I've had the same experience as well, and found SwiftKey to be a decent replacement (though I'd prefer gBoard if it wasn't so crashy)

Not that Gboard it seems

This this is do good. Solves the issue for backend development

Reply on news.ycombinator.com