Modern and Global Text Input For Every User (Input Methods, Emoji, Touch, ...)
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Description

Description

Text input is the foundational means of human-computer interaction: We configure or systems, program them, and express ourselves through them by writing text. It's how our software is made, and it's how it's consumed. It's how users and developers connect with each other.

Yet text input in our software is not complete, and it's not as strong as it could be. Some cannot use our software to write text at all. Others are not doing it as efficiently as they could be, or with as much joy.

The good news is that improving this is within our reach. If we care to do so.

I propose that we spend time and effort on:

  • ... enabling more users to write their language in our software
  • ... allowing all of our users to input text with greater efficiency
  • ... bringing more joy to text input by improving support for emoji
  • ... making text input act consistently across different input devices
  • ... addressing key defects in our software related to global text

To do this we will:

  1. Improve support for Input Methods in Plasma by making it always-on and redesigning System Settings and runtime UI
  2. Improve support for emoji with an easily accessible emoji input palette
  3. Improve the convergent text input experience by making physical and virtual keyboards act consistently
  4. Improve global text support in our application software by fixing key bugs and adding missing features

What it will take

UX designers, artists, translators, shell programmers, library programmers and application programmers will need to organize and assign work items, document new knowledge and create checklists, and implement the proposed solutions across all of our software.

How we know we succeeded

We'll have succeeded when our systems and applications can be configured to write and display the world's most prominent languages and writing systems (including emoji) easily and efficiently. The result will make free systems viable for more users across the globe and expand our community.

Relevant links

I am willing to put work into this

  • Eike Hein
  • Xuetian Weng
  • Thomas Pfeiffer

I am interested

  • Nate Graham
  • Franklin Weng
  • Lydia Pintscher
  • DaeHyun Sung
hein created this task.Aug 21 2017, 8:25 AM
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)
hein renamed this task from Modern and Global Text Input For Every User (Input Methods, Emoji, Touch) to Modern and Global Text Input For Every User (Input Methods, Emoji, Touch, ...).
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 21 2017, 8:27 AM
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 21 2017, 8:31 AM
ngraham updated the task description. (Show Details)Aug 24 2017, 3:48 AM
cfeck added a subscriber: cfeck.Oct 2 2017, 7:53 PM
hein added a comment.Oct 4 2017, 8:17 AM

@knauss Yes, that's within the scope of this as well.

(It's really a shame that the Akademy videos haven't made it online yet - or you could watch me talk about this stuff for 30+ minutes. The slide deck that's linked is an okay substitute. :)

knauss added a comment.Oct 4 2017, 9:12 AM

@hein: thx for the clearification. I have no hands on fcitx, and don't speak/write such languages needing these. But was just courious if you aware of these issues.

hein added a comment.EditedOct 4 2017, 9:22 AM

@knauss One of the major thrusts of my Akademy talk was how this goes beyond "I don't speak/write such languages needing these", though - even if you're writing in English or German, for example, you can benefit from input methods such as word completion, spell correction or emoji input, and probably use them on mobile already (which we also target in KDE/FOSS, and are currently woefully inadequate at). Improving our input story can benefit everyone. It's a chicken/egg problem that we don't have more people using this yet because our support for it is so shoddy.

franklin updated the task description. (Show Details)Oct 5 2017, 5:29 PM
franklin added a subscriber: franklin.
xuetianweng updated the task description. (Show Details)Oct 5 2017, 5:37 PM
xuetianweng added a subscriber: xuetianweng.
colomar updated the task description. (Show Details)Oct 5 2017, 7:10 PM
colomar added a subscriber: colomar.

This is hugely important, from an accessibility, internationalization as well as usability perspective. That's why I'd be happy to help with UX design and testing.

colomar updated the task description. (Show Details)Oct 14 2017, 4:26 PM
ach added a subscriber: ach.Oct 20 2017, 7:26 AM
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)Oct 24 2017, 3:00 AM
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)
hein updated the task description. (Show Details)

@hein the link to the slides is broken: https://conf.kde.org/system/attachments/99/original/Input_Methods_in_Plasma_5.pdf returns to:

The page you were looking for doesn't exist.

You may have mistyped the address or the page may have moved.
hein added a comment.Oct 24 2017, 7:09 PM

Thanks, I've informed sysadmin. Apparently the server lost various slides ...

lydia added a subscriber: lydia.

Thanks everyone for helping draft this proposal. The voting has started. If you are an active KDE contributor and have not received an invitation to the vote please send me an email to lydia@kde.org.

daehyuns updated the task description. (Show Details)Nov 14 2018, 6:25 AM
daehyuns added a subscriber: daehyuns.
bam added a subscriber: bam.Jul 15 2020, 3:39 PM