I am an English speaking student of Chinese. Confession: I have for some years on stock Android used Gboard with Google Pinyin. I’m looking for an equally comfortable IME on a BraX3 using iodéOS-7.7.
I may be missing something, but my system languages are set to
English (New Zealand);
简体中文 (中国) [Simplified Chinese].
Yet it appears Heliboard does not support any CJK languages. Adding a Chinese IME to Heliboard results in the IME when invoked presenting its own on screen keyboard, which usually looks and feels different to the basic Heliboard.
I have used fcitx for years on my laptop, so tried the F-Droid version. It presents its own keyboard which permanently shows the additional symbols below each letter (instead of in the Android usual key-press pop-up) resulting in smaller normal letters, and bigger vertical height of the overall keyboard.
Trime has its own, different, keyboard, and the setup and on the fly language swap feels clunky. In spite of my system language setting of Simplified Chinese, Trime keeps dropping back into Traditional.
I tried a couple of other Chinese IMEs which appear aimed at a native Chinese audience, and one said in its introduction that it was deliberately not allowing users to type Pinyin and select candidates.
I am sure there are many that will appreciate this discussion, but I am not qualified to make any suggestions I wonder if “futo” would have better support?
About Heliboard, I see these issues, maybe there are some relevant suggestions there:
Thanks @rik, sometimes i’m just looking in the wrong direction With the heliboard as the default install on BraX3/iodé I couldn’t believe they had completely overlooked CJK input. The github threads indicate it is still in the “too hard” basket. AnySoftKeyboard also has put a lot of effort into all the alphabetic languages, but nothing ideographic.
Futo however has some worthy ideals, completely offline, still adding support for languages and input methods. Some superficial reviews on the web liked the look and feel but noted a lack of support for some features. It took me some digging to find how to add a Chinese dictionary - now I’ll give it a few days try out. Their pricing model is interesting: $7 from us [a bargain for a real multilingual keyboard] or $12 from the G.
I wonder if “futo” would have better support?
With the heliboard as the default install on BraX3/iodé I couldn’t believe they had completely overlooked CJK input. The github threads indicate it is still in the “too hard” basket. AnySoftKeyboard also has put a lot of effort into all the alphabetic languages, but nothing ideographic.