7 ms·

I sometimes wonder if modal editing (like vim uses) might be a good approach for navigating/editing longform text on touch devices. It does seem like a missed

I sometimes wonder if modal editing (like vim uses) might be a good approach for navigating/editing longform text on touch devices. It does seem like a missed opportunity to have taken the keyboard/mouse approach and then transferred it to touch devices. Even the keyboard layout has no real advantage for two thumb typing on a screen. Approaches that adapt the interface whilst leaning heavily on letter based inference could be interesting for one handed / single digit entry of letters. Something like dasher: https://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/dashersummary.html https://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/dashersummary.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software)

breakfastduck 3y ago
modal editing is just too much overhead for the average smart phone user.
- dietr1ch 3y ago
  I don't think so, but the mode change can't be some obscure thing slightly changing in the status bar.
- genter 3y ago
  There's tons of professional writers though, not to mention business users, lawyers, and other professionals that do lots of writing. It's pretty obvious that desktops are going the way of the dodo, and the aforementioned users need to write lots of text on mobile devices. I don't think modal text entry is any more onerous to learn than a graphic artist learning Blender or Photoshop, or an engineer learning Solidworks.
  - troupe 3y ago
    There may be fewer desktops, but laptops work the same way and they don't seem to be going away any time soon. I'm not aware of "tons of professional writers, lawyers, and other professionals that do lots of writing" who spend most of their writing time on the type of mobile devices described in this article.
    - genter 3y ago
      I'm not saying they are now. I'm saying they will in the future.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        I really doubt people are every going to give up big stand-alone monitors. Putting cellphones on big standalone monitors might work. But in that case, we’ll probably also need to attach a pointing device and some way of entering text, so from a UI point of view, we’ve got a desktop. Cellphones definitely have sufficient processing power for lots of typical office workloads nowadays… but using them in this way doesn’t seem to have caught on. I dunno, eventually this sort of discussion ends up at “why didn’t DeX take over the world,” a question for which I have no good answers, since, like everyone else, I never tried it out.
        troupe 3y ago
        I occasionally use DeX. It is fine, if you are needing to read email, browse the web, or do simple word processing, or need a touch interface for drawing. If I'm going to sit down and work for multiple hours, I'd rather be using my desktop applications.
  - PeterisP 3y ago
    No, the aforementioned users do not need to write lots of text on mobile devices - a professional writer will choose or adapt their devices and environment to best suit the needs of their writing work, not adapt their writing to better suit the limitations of the devices; instead it's all the "casual" users who need to make do with whatever device they have on hand even if that device was optimized for entirely different needs.
- mikepurvis 3y ago
  But nowadays you can install custom keyboards on every OS that could probably get you most of the way there.
  - eviks 3y ago
    Do you know of an example?
    - mikepurvis 3y ago
      Sadly, no. There certainly are lots of novel keyboards out there that can be googled up, but perhaps the kinds of features that would make a vim/modal-type keyboard be interesting and useful on mobile require further API hooks into the standard text-input controls (to be able to do things like find word and line boundaries, perform complex selections and replacements, etc). I wonder if ultimately, the advantages of a "stay on the home row" philosophy like vim has just don't really manifest when there's no longer a physical keyboard as the underlying HMI. But the core idea of doing something modal and separating movement/selection from input does still feel valuable.
- Shared404 3y ago
  I dunno, Samsung's default keyboard already has am implementation of modal editing, which was loved by most of it's users that I knew. Not in the same way as vim, but you could hit a hot key to switch your keyboard to a navigation/select/copy+paste mode.
- eviks 3y ago
  That's fine, the average computer user also doesn't use modal editing
lachlan_gray 3y ago
On an iPhone if you hold the space bar down the whole keyboard becomes a kind of trackpad which you can use to move the cursor. Since all the keys disappear, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to add something that works like mouse buttons so you could select text or paste in a specific spot in that “mode”. Right now it’s so frustrating to do any kind of selecting.
- BagelGuy 3y ago
  OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING HOW DID I NOW KNOW THIS
- failuser 3y ago
  You can use that for selection as well, tap somewhere else on the keyboard. Used to be even better with 3D Touch, you did not have to wait for the long press to register.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Holy crap. I've been using the space bar for years to move the cursor, I had no idea you could select with it too. Thank you! It's even officially documented as well [1]. I wonder if selection was introduced when the spacebar cursor was, or if it was later. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscreen-keyboard-iph3c50f96e/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscree...
    - hbn 3y ago
      I frequently use the selection, but I don't like the implementation of it. Rather than the selection being between the starting "anchor" point and your moving cursor's position, the cursor you're moving around just creates an ever-growing selection that can't be subtracted from. So if you're e.g. selecting across multiple lines and you bring the cursor up to the line above, it'll select everything from the starting point to where the cursor is now, but if you bring it back down it doesn't unselect that text. So if you accidentally select something you didn't want to, the selection is essentially ruined and you need to start over. I have no idea why they implemented it like this.
Pxtl 3y ago
In gboard we've already got modal stuff for numerical keypad, emojis, special characters (2 different modal pages), etc. Adding one more modal keyboard page for cursor-editing (arrow keys, ctrl-arrow-keys, home/end, pgup/godown, select-toggle-button, delete, rclick menu) would just make sense. Would just be getting the rest of the desktop keyboard into the phone keyboard, nothing groundbreaking.
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  They already have an option to move your visit by dragging across spacebar. Why not just replace half of the oversized spacebar key with something useful?
  - redsharktooth 3y ago
    TIL, thanks!
- somethingsidont 3y ago
  This exists on Android Gboard, though it's hidden in some menus by default. [0] [0] https://www.xda-developers.com/gboard-v6-2-adds-cursor-control-cutcopypaste-buttons-and-adjustable-keyboard-dimensions/ https://www.xda-developers.com/gboard-v6-2-adds-cursor-contr... (2017)
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    Whoa, I had no idea (obviously). Note, that article is out of date, instead of the G icon, now it's a four-square icon. I don't know why they're not just using a standard hamburger icon, but whatever.
  - davidinosauro 3y ago
    Wow, indeed it's still there in GBoard! Thank you for sharing, I could never have found it before knowing it exists.
bee_rider 3y ago
You can install blink shell, panic prompt, or whatever the popular iPhone ssh client of the day is and ssh over to your desktop to get a preview of how this would work. Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard, it is fine IMO. The screen is a little bit small. Sometimes if I’m going to SSH from my phone, I’ll put the phone on a little stand in front of the keyboard, so it can sit more like a foot from my face, or whatever (normal cellphone usage distance). Or, I’ll put it in portrait mode farther away and think of it as “half a screen.” Either way works fine for short stints. Nebulous concerns about eyeball heath for long sessions, although I have no real evidence to back that up, and we’re all screwed on that front anyway, right?
- thomastjeffery 3y ago
  SSH isn't a solution. I'm trying to edit text here on my phone, not out on some server. What GP is advocating is to replace the on-screen keyboard with a modal editing UX.
- soupbowl 3y ago
  I do this all the time but I have not found a Bluetooth keyboard that is portable and not total junk. Do you have any suggestions?
  - awiesenhofer 3y ago
    I had a Logitech Keys-to-go I was quite happy with but recently got myself this 60% mechanical keyboard, mostly because you can get it with a case that doubles as a phone & tablet stand https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/air60?variant=39620737171565 https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/air60?varia...
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Nope; I had a fold out one for a while but inevitably one side seems to go bad. In the end I got Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard, I like the scissor actuation or whatever, but it is slightly too big to be as portable as a cellphone.
miniupuchaty 3y ago
I've been using nvim in termux on foldable phone since I've bought phone in that form factor. It works great, I'm using "unexpected keyboard" as input method for faster special symbols access. It works pretty well. Good enough for me to program on the go.
- justin_oaks 3y ago
  Thanks for letting me know about the Unexpected Keyboard app. It'll take some getting used to, but having arrow keys and punctuation available without changing modes is pretty awesome. I can even hit Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy, etc. This alone will help text editing on my phone.
  - ddingus 3y ago
    The hacker keyboard does that also. Most standard keyboard functions work as you would expect them to. That said, I am going to go try the unexpected keyboard. I like it. I really like the select cursor motion on the space bar. Makes quick work of a copy paste operation.
  - soupbowl 3y ago
    This is also the first I have heard of this keyboard, it is incredible.
  - witrak 3y ago
    Seems to be quite an improvement. Thank you for the tip! But it would be even better if it had "stylus mode" because, with a precision stylus, it's easier to tap directly alternate characters than to drag from the center of the button toward the needed variant.

breakfastduck 3y ago

modal editing is just too much overhead for the average smart phone user.

dietr1ch 3y ago
I don't think so, but the mode change can't be some obscure thing slightly changing in the status bar.
genter 3y ago
There's tons of professional writers though, not to mention business users, lawyers, and other professionals that do lots of writing. It's pretty obvious that desktops are going the way of the dodo, and the aforementioned users need to write lots of text on mobile devices. I don't think modal text entry is any more onerous to learn than a graphic artist learning Blender or Photoshop, or an engineer learning Solidworks.
- troupe 3y ago
  There may be fewer desktops, but laptops work the same way and they don't seem to be going away any time soon. I'm not aware of "tons of professional writers, lawyers, and other professionals that do lots of writing" who spend most of their writing time on the type of mobile devices described in this article.
  - genter 3y ago
    I'm not saying they are now. I'm saying they will in the future.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      I really doubt people are every going to give up big stand-alone monitors. Putting cellphones on big standalone monitors might work. But in that case, we’ll probably also need to attach a pointing device and some way of entering text, so from a UI point of view, we’ve got a desktop. Cellphones definitely have sufficient processing power for lots of typical office workloads nowadays… but using them in this way doesn’t seem to have caught on. I dunno, eventually this sort of discussion ends up at “why didn’t DeX take over the world,” a question for which I have no good answers, since, like everyone else, I never tried it out.
      - troupe 3y ago
        I occasionally use DeX. It is fine, if you are needing to read email, browse the web, or do simple word processing, or need a touch interface for drawing. If I'm going to sit down and work for multiple hours, I'd rather be using my desktop applications.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  No, the aforementioned users do not need to write lots of text on mobile devices - a professional writer will choose or adapt their devices and environment to best suit the needs of their writing work, not adapt their writing to better suit the limitations of the devices; instead it's all the "casual" users who need to make do with whatever device they have on hand even if that device was optimized for entirely different needs.
mikepurvis 3y ago
But nowadays you can install custom keyboards on every OS that could probably get you most of the way there.
- eviks 3y ago
  Do you know of an example?
  - mikepurvis 3y ago
    Sadly, no. There certainly are lots of novel keyboards out there that can be googled up, but perhaps the kinds of features that would make a vim/modal-type keyboard be interesting and useful on mobile require further API hooks into the standard text-input controls (to be able to do things like find word and line boundaries, perform complex selections and replacements, etc). I wonder if ultimately, the advantages of a "stay on the home row" philosophy like vim has just don't really manifest when there's no longer a physical keyboard as the underlying HMI. But the core idea of doing something modal and separating movement/selection from input does still feel valuable.
Shared404 3y ago
I dunno, Samsung's default keyboard already has am implementation of modal editing, which was loved by most of it's users that I knew. Not in the same way as vim, but you could hit a hot key to switch your keyboard to a navigation/select/copy+paste mode.
eviks 3y ago
That's fine, the average computer user also doesn't use modal editing

lachlan_gray 3y ago

On an iPhone if you hold the space bar down the whole keyboard becomes a kind of trackpad which you can use to move the cursor. Since all the keys disappear, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to add something that works like mouse buttons so you could select text or paste in a specific spot in that “mode”. Right now it’s so frustrating to do any kind of selecting.

BagelGuy 3y ago
OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING HOW DID I NOW KNOW THIS
failuser 3y ago
You can use that for selection as well, tap somewhere else on the keyboard. Used to be even better with 3D Touch, you did not have to wait for the long press to register.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Holy crap. I've been using the space bar for years to move the cursor, I had no idea you could select with it too. Thank you! It's even officially documented as well [1]. I wonder if selection was introduced when the spacebar cursor was, or if it was later. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscreen-keyboard-iph3c50f96e/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscree...
  - hbn 3y ago
    I frequently use the selection, but I don't like the implementation of it. Rather than the selection being between the starting "anchor" point and your moving cursor's position, the cursor you're moving around just creates an ever-growing selection that can't be subtracted from. So if you're e.g. selecting across multiple lines and you bring the cursor up to the line above, it'll select everything from the starting point to where the cursor is now, but if you bring it back down it doesn't unselect that text. So if you accidentally select something you didn't want to, the selection is essentially ruined and you need to start over. I have no idea why they implemented it like this.

Pxtl 3y ago

In gboard we've already got modal stuff for numerical keypad, emojis, special characters (2 different modal pages), etc. Adding one more modal keyboard page for cursor-editing (arrow keys, ctrl-arrow-keys, home/end, pgup/godown, select-toggle-button, delete, rclick menu) would just make sense. Would just be getting the rest of the desktop keyboard into the phone keyboard, nothing groundbreaking.

thomastjeffery 3y ago
They already have an option to move your visit by dragging across spacebar. Why not just replace half of the oversized spacebar key with something useful?
- redsharktooth 3y ago
  TIL, thanks!
somethingsidont 3y ago
This exists on Android Gboard, though it's hidden in some menus by default. [0] [0] https://www.xda-developers.com/gboard-v6-2-adds-cursor-control-cutcopypaste-buttons-and-adjustable-keyboard-dimensions/ https://www.xda-developers.com/gboard-v6-2-adds-cursor-contr... (2017)
- Pxtl 3y ago
  Whoa, I had no idea (obviously). Note, that article is out of date, instead of the G icon, now it's a four-square icon. I don't know why they're not just using a standard hamburger icon, but whatever.
- davidinosauro 3y ago
  Wow, indeed it's still there in GBoard! Thank you for sharing, I could never have found it before knowing it exists.

bee_rider 3y ago

You can install blink shell, panic prompt, or whatever the popular iPhone ssh client of the day is and ssh over to your desktop to get a preview of how this would work. Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard, it is fine IMO. The screen is a little bit small. Sometimes if I’m going to SSH from my phone, I’ll put the phone on a little stand in front of the keyboard, so it can sit more like a foot from my face, or whatever (normal cellphone usage distance). Or, I’ll put it in portrait mode farther away and think of it as “half a screen.” Either way works fine for short stints. Nebulous concerns about eyeball heath for long sessions, although I have no real evidence to back that up, and we’re all screwed on that front anyway, right?

thomastjeffery 3y ago
SSH isn't a solution. I'm trying to edit text here on my phone, not out on some server. What GP is advocating is to replace the on-screen keyboard with a modal editing UX.
soupbowl 3y ago
I do this all the time but I have not found a Bluetooth keyboard that is portable and not total junk. Do you have any suggestions?
- awiesenhofer 3y ago
  I had a Logitech Keys-to-go I was quite happy with but recently got myself this 60% mechanical keyboard, mostly because you can get it with a case that doubles as a phone & tablet stand https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/air60?variant=39620737171565 https://nuphy.com/collections/keyboards/products/air60?varia...
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Nope; I had a fold out one for a while but inevitably one side seems to go bad. In the end I got Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard, I like the scissor actuation or whatever, but it is slightly too big to be as portable as a cellphone.

miniupuchaty 3y ago

I've been using nvim in termux on foldable phone since I've bought phone in that form factor. It works great, I'm using "unexpected keyboard" as input method for faster special symbols access. It works pretty well. Good enough for me to program on the go.

justin_oaks 3y ago
Thanks for letting me know about the Unexpected Keyboard app. It'll take some getting used to, but having arrow keys and punctuation available without changing modes is pretty awesome. I can even hit Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy, etc. This alone will help text editing on my phone.
- ddingus 3y ago
  The hacker keyboard does that also. Most standard keyboard functions work as you would expect them to. That said, I am going to go try the unexpected keyboard. I like it. I really like the select cursor motion on the space bar. Makes quick work of a copy paste operation.
- soupbowl 3y ago
  This is also the first I have heard of this keyboard, it is incredible.
- witrak 3y ago
  Seems to be quite an improvement. Thank you for the tip! But it would be even better if it had "stylus mode" because, with a precision stylus, it's easier to tap directly alternate characters than to drag from the center of the button toward the needed variant.