Database Users

[Q] [rant] Problem with Virtuous Unity and Swype

Today I spent 30 minutes logging into a website. It's Swype that was messing me up, I would type in "gromacs" and it would change to "grimace" I don't understand why it would do that, and unlike other proper software with autocorrect that can recognize when you want it to go away, I can delete it, type in "gromacs" again and it simply changes my input to "grimace" again! Stupid piece of garbage! So I uninstalled Swype. Then I was left with a bleeping Arabic keyboard, wtf Virtuous Unity?
I went to manage applications, and I cannot uninstall this Arabic keyboard that I will never use. Why? Why is the option for silent mode gone from the drop down menu? Yes I know that I can get Android to do what I want with 2 hours of changing various settings, but the only reason I use Virtuous Unity over CyanogenMod is because there is less to configure and it was how I liked it out of the box. How can I get the silent mode setting back? How can I completely remove autocorrect and suggest functionality from my phone? How can completely remove this "Arabic" keyboard from my phone while keeping (what's left of) Virtuous Unity?

im pretty sure your arabic keyboard is just a normal keyboard with the language setting on arabic, and swype sucks dont use it haha. i dont use virtuous unity so i wouldnt know how to activate your silent setting thing

gromacs said:
Today I spent 30 minutes logging into a website. It's Swype that was messing me up, I would type in "gromacs" and it would change to "grimace" I don't understand why it would do that, and unlike other proper software with autocorrect that can recognize when you want it to go away, I can delete it, type in "gromacs" again and it simply changes my input to "grimace" again! Stupid piece of garbage! So I uninstalled Swype. Then I was left with a bleeping Arabic keyboard, wtf Virtuous Unity?
I went to manage applications, and I cannot uninstall this Arabic keyboard that I will never use. Why? Why is the option for silent mode gone from the drop down menu? Yes I know that I can get Android to do what I want with 2 hours of changing various settings, but the only reason I use Virtuous Unity over CyanogenMod is because there is less to configure and it was how I liked it out of the box. How can I get the silent mode setting back? How can I completely remove autocorrect and suggest functionality from my phone? How can completely remove this "Arabic" keyboard from my phone while keeping (what's left of) Virtuous Unity?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android has a section in the settings called "Language & keyboard". Try looking there to change your keyboard settings. Also, to change which keyboard you use, long press any text input field and choose "input method". Then choose "touch input" instead of "Arabic keyboard". Viola, a regular keyboard.
I actually posted this same info for someone else less than a month ago and included screen shots, do a search for "HTC keyboard" the thread title also included some way of referring to CM7.
Last thing, the HTC keyboard has a library where you can add your own words to it. The default library doesn't contain expletives and will sub them for similar words. So, you can add gromacs to the library to avoid your another rant like the one above about swype. Swype can also be taught words too.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

If you actually looked at your keyboard for more than 30 seconds while typing you would find that right above the actual keys is a list of suggestions that are dynamically displayed, the first of those options is what you have currently typed, not only does selecting that avoid your issue, it saves it in your personal dictionary. ..

Are we blaming the tool instead of the user?
Just because you were using the Swype keyboard didn't mean you were obligated to make swiping motions. If you had typed in your username the usual way by tapping, you get what darinmc described above with the ability to save what you typed to your dictionary. You could also ignore the suggestions completely and keep typing. In fact, you could tap on the Swype keyboard all the time instead of swiping. Not only that, but you can turn off word suggestion and auto-correction in Swype's settings! I'm sorry, but getting stuck on a login screen for half an hour and then blaming Swype is classic PEBKAC. Period.
Who cares about the Arabic keyboard? Unless that's your only available input method now, I could think of several apps that could be uninstalled first before I would come anywhere close to caring about the Arabic keyboard.

Thanks for the help guys, after I recovered from my raging at such terrible mechanics of this software I went back and dug through some more settings. I did add gromacs to the dictionary, and now I'm able to swype gromacs and expletives. The suggest and autocorrect settings were in the Swype menu, not the android keyboard menu which is why swype still behaved like that after I changed the android keyboard settings.
Snakecharmed yes that's what I did, and as soon as I type out a word the swype auto-screwup would kick in and change the word. I don't think any ROM should come with any keyboard other than standard US. If they want to throw in arab, why not throw in chinese as well? My friend wants a french keyboard. The stranger on the street wants a weddings keyboard. See where I'm getting at? Maybe the guy who created VU uses the arab keyboard, idk.
I'm sorry, not Peroid. A user unable to figure out messy software settings means the software is bad, not the user. This is not PEBKAC, this is PEBAndroid-and-Swype

How did you even get Swype in the first place? Swype isn't supposed to come with Virtuous Unity. I had to install Swype separately by extracting the files from a backup of the Espresso Gingerbread ROM and then pushing the files to the phone after Virtuous Unity was installed. Along with the absence or omission of the Touch Input keyboard as one of your keyboard options in your original post, what you've described does not sound like the stock settings for Virtuous Unity at all and something isn't adding up.
I thought you uninstalled Swype after your previous blowup anyway. How and why are you still using it?
I feel that my point stands. I didn't know what Swype was when I first got this phone, so I didn't swipe. I tapped with the Swype keyboard, didn't notice anything different from any other keyboard, and thus never had any reason to blame auto-correct resulting from swiping because auto-correct is only supposed to happen when you swipe and not when you tap.
Ultimately though, if you have everything working the way you want it to now, then that's all that matters.

I was just trying to get you back to the HTC keyboard and set it up. I hate swype. I know I could get used to it if I use it, but I don't like how the swiping action works. My hand blocks the keyboard off when swiping so I have to pause and maneuver my hand so i can figure out the direct line to the next letter without lifting my finger.
And the auto correct function does work when tapping. It messed me up when I tried logging in gmail to setup the phone when i first bought it.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

The only thing I can possibly think of is that there were different default behaviors for different versions of Swype. I never had an issue with Swype 3.7 that comes with the Espresso Gingerbread ROM and that's what I'm using now. I do know that the older version of Swype that was on the stock Espresso Froyo ROM was more cumbersome, but I hardly used it because I was busy rooting and flashing a new ROM at that point. However, neither version should be in the install package for Virtuous Unity or else this thread wouldn't need to exist.
Either way, if the input functions as expected for the OP now regardless of the keyboard of choice, then we can move on because if it works, it works.

[Q] Slow keyboard auto-correct?

Hi all, my first post on here. I picked up my S4 last Friday (UK on Vodafone) and I've been loving it ever since, its a massive step forwards from my old HTC Desire.
Anyway, the only thing that's really bugging me so far is the stock keyboard auto-correct. I've got it set-up to auto-correct when I hit the space bar but I'm running into a problem, I'm typing too fast for the keyboard. For example I type "the" and hit space, yet auto-correct is still offering me "th" as it hasn't caught up so instead of "the" I get it auto-corrected to "th". If I slow down a little it works fine but this is missing the point.
I know I can switch the keyboard so SwiftKey, which I had on the HTC, but before I do that I wondered if there's a way to speed up the auto-correct?

can you tell me how you set it up to auto correct?
i came from the htc one and really liked the keyboard and the fact that it would auto correct most things but i find with the s4 that it gives me the a correct spelling of the word in blue above the keys but does not seem to insert it into the text ive written.
thanks

Yeah where's this option
Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk 2

Settings, Language and Input, Samsung keyboard settings, enable Predictive Text then pick the Autoreplacement option

A mate has just tried using the "swipe" like input method on his S4, it makes the auto-correct lag issue look simple. Its so bad that its effectively unusable for quick text entry!

I've found it sometimes to be SLOW. as in , i type a whole word like KEYBOARD, and the predictive text didn't keep up and it replaced my word with "."
then sometimes, i've found the keyboard to be super QUICK!. not sure what the hell is going on.
This sounds like a bug. how do we notify samsung?
clearing the customized learning makes it REALLY QUICK, but then you lose your common words.
even you type a word in like KEYBOARD carefully and slowly it will replace it with its default word...
stupid really. if i typed it in slower and careful, i dont want it to be replaced.

+++ SwiftKey +++

sadekmefti said:
+++ SwiftKey +++
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I'm back on SwiftKey now and its much faster. But I like the Samsung keyboard, specifically having the numbers as separate keys above the QWERTY 'board. Oh well, I guess I'll have to see if the software update has made any difference

robpc said:
Settings, Language and Input, Samsung keyboard settings, enable Predictive Text then pick the Autoreplacement option
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no autoreplacement option. AT&T SGS4.

Predictive text gone?

Can't find the predictive text in the settings. Do you guys have that feature?

Well, this is pretty weird behaviour, and I spent a number of roll-backs of my phone suffering from same one, until I found the root cause of it. Go into Settings->Accessibility, and scroll to the bottom section, Services. Whenever you have some app there marked as ON - your keyboard gets limited in functionality, dunno why. I have 2 apps there, and I disabled both of them, to have wider options for my keyboard.
Hope it helps.

creage said:
Well, this is pretty weird behaviour, and I spent a number of roll-backs of my phone suffering from same one, until I found the root cause of it. Go into Settings->Accessibility, and scroll to the bottom section, Services. Whenever you have some app there marked as ON - your keyboard gets limited in functionality, dunno why. I have 2 apps there, and I disabled both of them, to have wider options for my keyboard.
Hope it helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, it worked. Thank you so much!
It seems like only some app will cause the problem. Optical Reader from Samsung will only disable my keyboard features, out of 6 apps.
UPDATE: I can now reorder my edge panels after disabling it.

OMG.. finally got my predictive text to work again. I turned off optical reader in accessibility and viola. It instantly returned!!! Thought I would never get it back!
Sent from my SM-T817W using Tapatalk

Software behind the hardware keyboard

So I have found the keyboard to be somewhat fraustrating. Not because it is virtual, but because of the software behind it.
First of all, it is rather strange that you cannot set more than one keybaord. Essentially, the device can have two keyboards that you might regularly swap between: the hardware keyboard and the one screen keyboard one might use while in tablet mode. The hardware keyboard uses the autocorrect of the keyboard you have set as your software keyboard. You cannot set seperate keyboard engines for the hardware and software keyboard.
As I said, the autocorrect/engine behind the hardware keyboard is dependant on your choice of software keybaord. However, as far as I can tell, only the defualt TouchPal keyboard provides any autocorrect for the hardware keybaord. The stock android keyboard offers no autocorrect with the hardware keyboard.
On a related note, TouchPal is awful. The autocorrect works pretty badly and is basically very annoying to use. I won't bore you with the details, but things like autocorrecting to a new word when you go back to edit a mistake. This makes it almost unusable.
Also the touch pad is very bad. No two funger scrolling means that again, it is pretty much useless.
I think the Yoga Book is a great device in most respects. Its intersting that all of these problems relate to the software and could potentially be fixed by Lenovo or there may even be fixes out there now.
Has anyone found any solutions to these problems? Thanks, Liam

I completely agree with you and am having the same frustration with the software behind the keyboard. So far the best solution I have found is to use SwiftKey or Swiftkey Beta (not sure which is best yet). With a bit of tweaking you can get decent auto complete and auto correct using both the halo and on screen keyboard. Much better than Touchpal at least. A couple of issues I have found using Swiftkey and halo keyboard: 1) auto complete seems to turn off when resuming from sleep mode (tapping the keyboard button on the top row reactivates it) 2) in WhatsApp Tablet app, after pressing Enter to send a message, the next message gets double words - I. E. Auto correct adds to what you type, doesn't replace it.

I can confirm that switching to SwiftKey makes the hardware keyboard usable! I'm actually using the keyboard to type this now. Naturally, I'm making tons of mistakes but it is catching and correcting almost all of them!
Can confirm that SwiftKey easily switches between physical keyboard and on-screen keyboard when the physical keyboard is toggled on and off.
If anyone is still using the default software keyboard, switch now!!!

Thanks for the tip! This makes a big difference! Have either of you found a way to get auto capitalise to work? The setting is enabled but it doesn't do anythig.

My issue with SwiftKey is that there is no good ways to select a suggested word. You always have to click with your finger on the screen which completely ruins ten finger typing for my.
So I ended up with disabled word correction as it's faster to remove some mistyped words and type again, than to click on the screen.
How do you handle suggestions made by SwiftKey?

faeArai said:
My issue with SwiftKey is that there is no good ways to select a suggested word. You always have to click with your finger on the screen which completely ruins ten finger typing for my.
So I ended up with disabled word correction as it's faster to remove some mistyped words and type again, than to click on the screen.
How do you handle suggestions made by SwiftKey?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have found that SwiftKey enters the main suggested word when I press space. This is good for most of the time, but annoying when:
-I want to select a suggestion that is not the main suggested word (particularly a new word that it doesn't recognise)
-I want to add punctuation directly after the main suggested word (here, because I input the punctuation rather than pressing space, the suggested word is not entered)
I have certainly found using SwiftKey to be the best experience. It's quite a passive autocorrect that doesn't get in the way too much. I got so sick of TouchPal which really gets in your face with its incorrect predictions.
But still there is a lot of room for improvement. It's such a shame that it's terrible software that lets down this keyboard. In particular I don't understand why:
- Some keyboards (like the Google Keyboard) don't offer any correction or prediction when enabled. Does Android maybe treat the Halo keyboard as an external keyboard (which I suppose you wouldn't want predictive features for)?
- Keyboards that do offer prediction don't seem to respond to changes to their settings (I can't get SwiftKey to auto capitalise the first letter of a sentence for example). @thespinner02 mentioned tweaking with SwiftKey settings- I assume they meant for the onscreen keyboard because these settings don't do anything for the Halo keybaord.
I wonder whether there is a keyboard out there in the Play Store that works better with the Yoga Book. I'll try a few and let you guys know if I find one.

I tried several solutions but couldn't find anything good. Hardware keyboards are not that common on Android platform, I guess.

Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.

thespinner02 said:
Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! I didn't notice that- smart spacing etc makes a massive difference!
Pretty much my only problem with SwiftKey now is that it sometimes creates its own weird textbook instead of typing directly into the text field. But that's not a massive problem.
Also I sometimes accidentally change input method. Maybe I'm using a keyboard shortcut by mistake?

thespinner02 said:
Even using Swiftkey I sometimes get different results depending on the app being used. Auto capitalise is working OK for me, in Word for example.
There are specific options in Swiftkey for Physical Keyboard: in settings, Typing, Voice & Other Input. In Physical keyboard section I have Autocorrect and Auto capitalize on. Everything else off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In settings for hardware keyword I get no harder key found?
Went into Swift settings in onscreen. How to get settings for Halo?

With Yoga Book in laptop mode. Settings / Language & input / SwiftKey Keyboard / Typing / Voice & Other Input

You also need to make sure 'show input method' is not enabled in the keyboard settings/selector popup.
Does anyone else experience a problem with SwiftKey where in some text fields your text goes into a little popup text box at the bottom of the screen as well as the intended text field? And then to get rid of the popup text box you have to tap 'next'. This occurs in the Facebook messenger app for example.
Any way to disable it?
It seems to do this when the text field is small, but other keyboards just expend the text field as you type. The popup text box it creates doesn't expand anyway, so it doesn't offer extra functionality and is just an annoyance.

Can't change default keyboard

Since updating to Nougat, I can't find a way to change my default keyboard. I've gone to Language and Input - > Virtual Keyboard but after that, selecting a keyboard doesn't switch to it. Where is the setting to specify the default keyboard?

You might find your answer here:
http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/158966/how-to-change-default-keyboard-on-android-n
sent from a galaxy far far away

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, none of the suggestions worked. Makes me think the keyboards are not Nougat compatible yet, at least with switching your keyboards.
The only way I can make this work is to go to Settings->Language and Input->Virtual Keyboard->Manage Keyboards
From there, I have to set all the keyboards off that I DON'T want to us. Very aggravating but it's the only way it works. Before, there was an menu that displayed what the current keyboard is, and selecting it would give you a Choose Keyboard menu where you could change the default keyboard. That is gone now under Nougat.
SwiftKey is the ONLY keyboard that actually senses when you haven't set it yet, and it will pop up the Choose Keyboard option. GBoard and the Samsung default keyboard do NOT do this at all. Guess that's why I continue to stick with SwiftKey. I only download GBoard to see what the latest updates were like. Still not completely impressed. The only saving grace the GBoard and Samsung keyboard is the ability to move the cursor. In GBoard, it's swiping across the spacebar, and with Samsung, it's swiping left or right across the keyboard itself. I know SwiftKey has the arrow keys, but they place them in the worst spot: right below the spacebar. I am constantly hitting them when I mean to tap the spacebar, so I turn them off.

I found that Samsung has a thread in their forums for discussing issues people are having with the update and they are apparently monitoring it continuously. I also contacted Samsung support via Facebook Messenger and they have noted the issue and also referred me to the same thread. Not too bad as far as response and assistance. Pretty pleased with that. Just hope they fix this issue. Sounds like it's an issue with how they have modified the stock Android Nougat settings. There should be a gear icon next to each keyboard in the Language and Input->Virtual keyboard section, but there isn't. Hopefully, they'll fix this with a later OTA update.
Here's the link to their thread for reporting issues with the latest Nougat update:
https://us.community.samsung.com/t5...e/board-id/ProductUpdates/page/1/thread-id/61

Well this stinks for alot of people, hope to see it fixed soon! I had forgotten about Perfect Keyboard Pro having the same type of instructional screen when it installs. It gave me the ability to bring up the switch keyboard screen!

Finally figured out how to quickly switch between keyboards. When your keyboard is up, just swipe down in your notifications area to bring up the notifications section. In it, you should see a notification from Android System stating Switch keyboard. Select that notification and you will be able to easily switch to another keyboard.
Too bad that wasn't documented by Samsung, but at least you don't have to go to Settings->Language and input->Virtual keyboard->Manage keyboards and then have to manually shut off all the keyboards you don't want to use in order to enable the one you want to use.