self-induced insomniac. I like yerba maté and coding.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 25th, 2023

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  • Thumb key started with a pretty small amount of layouts. While creating a variant and PRing it might not be the cleanest solution, it definitely works. There have even been rejected open PRs adding in-app layout customizaiton (to some degree), and they were rejected mainly due to unnecessary complexity.

    Here are my few main reasons I think the current system is fine:

    • One of the only major downsides is that a new user might have a harder time finding the appropriate keyboard layout. However, if somebody is installing thumb-key, there’s a 99% chance they’re either a former MessagEase user (in which case they just select the MessagEase layout and continue with their life) or a curious person who is willing to experiment with a weird keyboard like this and try out 4 or 5 different layouts they find interesting. There are some ongoing discussions in the issues about a better naming scheme for the layouts, so new users can distinguish them better.
    • Implementing a in-app layout modification system with good UX would be very time consuming, and the developer’s main project is working on lemmy and the Jerboa app - I imagine there isn’t really that much time left to sink in hours for such a big feature. Most, if not all “bigger” features like slide gestures were several PRs from several differennt people, sometimes over the span of months.
    • Creating and maintaining your layout isn’t that hard - it can even be done without android studio, and in 1-3-ish iterations over the course of a week or two you get a layout that you are likely to use for a long time (at least, that’s how it was for me). Dessalines is, in my opinion, exceptionally quick in merging PRs and making new releases, so it’s really not that bad.