Atomik keyboard for Android?

[braj]

There used to be a wonderful keyboard for Palm OS called MyKbd that used IBM's ATOMIK layout and worked like SWYPE, but instead of using QWERTY which is designed specifically to be SLOW (for old manual typewriters so they wouldn't jam) it has really useful honeycomb layout that maximized space, and allowed swyping for some simple words like 'to' and 'the' that required minimum strokes. It was/is great on my old Palm TX. I wish this were the key layout for SWYPE and then it would be so much faster.

Just wondering if anyone has heard of this layout.

 

[KlaymenDK]

I'm very open to non-traditional keyboards; in fact I use Norwegian Dvorak on all my computers (but not on Android: there's no good non-English variant to be had).

I'm surprised that nobody has yet put out a keyboard app with an easily programmable layout -- the UI is xml-backed anyway so you'd think that it would be rather simple (with a dash of XSL) to allow users to define their own layouts using some simple XML structure. (There's a greater difference in the "tapping vs. swiping/sliding" input method, so I don't think you could make a single app do both very well.)

Strangely, it seems that the dictionary/autocomplete feature is not common to all keyboard apps but must be implemented separately.

Ah well, there's an opportunity for the taking.

FYI, there's a ton more ATOMIK information here.

Good luck! I'll keep an eye on this thread.

 

[khantan]

I am still using atomic on mykbd on a palm t/x.
I hope the author - Alexander Pruss - would someday port this program to Apple ipad or Samsung Tab.

 

[DenverRalphy]

Sorry to be a stickler but...

Qwerty wasn't designed to intentionally slow you down. It was actually designed to speed up typing speed. Qwerty was the end result of trial and error to refine the ease of typing based on letter-pair-combination frequency. The issue of preventing jams was addressed simply by putting the keys on a diagonal. The issue with Qwerty today is simply that it was designed for input using two hands and ten fingers.

That being said... there are a lot of virtual keyboards being developed to better accommodate one-finger/stylus swiping, and the research and studies showing how touchscreen input can be improved show a lot of merit. Unfortunately for me, Qwerty is so ingrained into my brain, I doubt I'd ever be able to train in a new method.