The new Google Keyboard for Android removed lots of the punctuation from the “.” key, including punctuation I use regularly. Should I take this as a sign that I use semicolons too much in my writing?

Curtis Olson November 07, 2013 15:16

If it’s not in an “I hz chzbrgr” caption of a cute cat picture, then it’s not important.

Curtis Olson November 07, 2013 15:17

If you like your keyboard, you can keep it; period.

Michael K Johnson November 07, 2013 16:09

I don’t think that’s in the Google Keyboard, and I can’t do without gesture typing…

Mitch Franklin November 07, 2013 16:53

You may like the Swype keyboard a lot better. It has the punctuation mark you need with a lot easier access. I also find that Swype recognizes my words more accurately then the Google keyboard does, and so it’s much faster to type with it.

Michael K Johnson November 07, 2013 17:07

Thanks for clarifying! I’m not sure it works better for me for gesture typing because I do a lot of my gesture typing without looking at the keyboard and so the larger keys make me more accurate… But it’s nice to understand how to get to the alternative!

Michael K Johnson November 07, 2013 17:11

+Mitch Franklin Swype got me used to gesture typing on my captivate, but even after they let me into the “beta”, updates consistently failed and the pretend exclusivity soured me on using swype. Meanwhile the alternatives kept improving, so I haven’t felt like going back. Maybe I should reconsider…

H. Peter Anvin November 07, 2013 23:00

It would be nice if one could customize the symbols available under various keys.

Lenz Grimmer November 08, 2013 04:43

Another lesser known gesture keyboard worth trying out is +TouchPal - I haven’t used the stock Android keyboard for ages…

Alan Cox November 08, 2013 11:51

I switched to the hackers keyboard early on because the usual keyboard was useless.

I wonder if the gnome 3 people have all been hired by Google and if we’ll soon have only a single button keyboard  ;-)

Michael K Johnson November 08, 2013 12:13

I use hackers keyboard when I’m in connectbot or terminal, but I “need” gesture typing most of the time, where “need” is defined as “poking at keys on a screen drives me up the wall”.

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