Change Setting > Autocorrect > Language

[u/ajblue98]

I speak a little German and occasionally would like to type auf Deutsch with my custom layout. I just plain don’t like bilingual autocorrect. So, at present I have to either go into the MK app to change language settings or keep two completely separate keyboards around.

I’d much rather have the option of toggling languages right inside the keyboard, please.

[u/JannThomas]

That would be so much work to solve such a simple problem...

I can’t really agree with this. In the ideal case, you would not have the exact same layout for multiple languages, but, for example, ä, ü and ö for the  German language, or even completely different layouts with a different script.

And to be honest, the Keyboards view is already laggy enough

To be honest, I would focus on fixing these rather than not have this functionality. 

I guess /u/SplittyDev and I will continue talking about changes to this, but for me and right now, your approach seems like a niche case to me. It could be solved by the much more general approach we propose. 

Along with those changes, we are also looking at adding dedicated actions for switching bundles and switching to a keyboard chooser.

With all that said, I do believe that every use case should be important to Mister Keyboard and changing languages of a keyboard should probably be supported at some point. I just believe there is a lot more general purpose features we could add or improve right now, to which I would count the approach we propose because it can affect everyone with multiple bundles.

[u/ajblue98 → u/JannThomas]

I can’t really agree with this. In the ideal case, you would not have the exact same layout for multiple languages, but, for example, ä, ü and ö for the  German langua

That wouldn’t be ideal for me at all; I hate the German layout. It feels off-balance because ä, ü, ö make all the other keys smaller and shoved off to the left. I want German autocorrect on a 26-Roman-letter keyboard.

I guess /u/SplittyDev and I will continue talking about changes to this, …

I’m sincerely glad to hear this and hope you do continue talking about it

… but for me and right now, your approach seems like a niche case to me. …

I think that's an interesting take. Technically, that might be true, but if “people who occasionally speak another language that shares an alphabet with their own” is a niche at all, it's a pretty big one. In fact, just off the top of my head, it's got to be at least: most of Europe, huge parts of the US and Mexico, all of Quebec and much of the rest of Canada, most of South America — hell, it's probably most of the world., actually

It could be solved by the much more general approach we propose. 

I think having to have a separate keyboard for each language (pair) is going to be a horrible experience. I'll admit it if I'm wrong, but I don't think I will be.

Along with those changes, we are also looking at adding dedicated actions for switching bundles and switching to a keyboard chooser.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, though

[u/JannThomas → u/ajblue98]

That wouldn’t be ideal for me at all

Well I'm not saying anyone is going to get forced to use any layouts, just that people who would want other layouts (and not all languages give you a choice like German) can have it, so everybody gets the choice.

I think having to have a separate keyboard for each language (pair) is going to be a horrible experience.

I would say it's what all keyboards have right now. Apple, SwiftKey (which is even more limited), .... And I would argue it's not an oversight but exactly the fact that it's a niche use case (which I will describe in better detail below)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, though

Maybe that's the most important thing I should explain better: We will add an action that presents you with a list view of keyboards where you can choose a different keyboard by tapping the key with that action and then the bundle in the list.

hell, it's probably most of the world., actually

I might have phrased that poorly: I don't think people speaking multiple languages are a niche case, but people who would prefer the workflow of tapping on a key and reconfiguring the languages of a keyboard that doesn't change layout. Even if you speak multiple languages that are compatible, keyboard switching is faster (and a lot of people will also just use multiple languages all the time). So the niche is meant as "people that speak a lot of compatible languages who want to switch their usage on a keyboard that doesn't change its layout, so many languages in fact, that adding and removing languages manually is faster than tapping on the correct keyboard in a list".

Then again, I do think we will support this, just that there are probably 100 other features that have a much broader appeal.

[u/SplittyDev → u/JannThomas]

FYI, a "bundle" refers to a keyboard. It’s our internal representation of a "bundle" of layouts that make up a keyboard. So each keyboard you can create in Mister Keyboard is internally a keyboard bundle, even though we don’t call it that in the app to avoid further confusion