include (sic) option in predictive text
There are times when I don't want to go with any of the options given to me on the predictive text bar: I'm fine with what I've typed in and don't want to replace it with the recommended word (the one colored blue) — or any of the other words on the bar, for that matter — but I also don't want to keep the recommended word from being recommended in the future, the way the “×” option does. This is particularly a problem with “i”: I cannot type “i.e.” without getting “I. e.” or losing the ability to have the keyboard capitalize my “I” words.
What I'd really like would be for whatever I've typed to show up as an option on the word bar immediately to the right of the recommended word (but only when there is a recommended word). I can then tap that to bypass the recommended spelling without formally rejecting that recommendation for all time.
(Explanation of title: (sic) is the typographic markup that tells the editors that the word's spelling is as intended and should not be corrected.)
Jon Lang
shared this idea
Update:
What about adding long-press of the ‘X’ causes the suggestion to be suppressed this time but not in the future? This is the opposite of the way Jon Lang suggests but users will be unlikely to discover long-press and their first priority is to “teach” the keyboard not to make substitutions that are not right for them. Aside from that, we don’t want to get into adding manual actions for controlling the dictionary because the goal is this kind of fiddling is kept out of the user’s hands. (Note, ‘ie’ → ‘i.e.’ and similar have been added as hard-coded shortcuts in English.
(Earlier comment):
The problem you mention is an annoying one. But I’m not sure about solving it by taking up a slot on the suggestions row for (typed) or “typed” every time there is an auto-suggestion. The constant presence of that item is one of the things I hate about other keyboards. Is there any other way we could address this issue?
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F Hiew
commented
Jon Lang has some great ideas. Putting an "+ADD" (or "Learn", "sic", "+" or "+1" etc) button which will add the typed word to the dictionary wouldn't take much space on the suggestion bar. Maybe you could remove the Redo arrow when it's not active?
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AdminTypefinity
(Support, Typefinity)
commented
We will start with adding some "i.e." recognition at least.
As far as breaking a link by hitting 'x', the link is just as easily restored by selecting the choice manually the next time it is presented. All of this could be made more sophisticated of course, but it hopefully suffices to not be TOO annoying. :-)
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Jon Lang
commented
In addition to the “×”, maybe preload the dictionary such that “ie” maps to “i.e.”? That would resolve the single biggest instance of “I” autospelling being problematic.
And/or look for “initial words” to put in the dictionary: ideally, after I type “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” a few times, I should then be able to type “SHIELD” and see “S.H.I.E.L.D.” as one of the options.
Finally: please consider having the “undo” button undo dictionary changes as well as typing. One of my pet peeves is that once I've used that “×” to break the link with a blue word, there's no easy way to say “oops; I didn't want to do that”.
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AdminTypefinity
(Support, Typefinity)
commented
This sounds pretty good, at least for the 'X'. Tapping other suggestions besides the blue one will already affect the future presentation of choices, just not in the drastic all-or-none way the 'X' does. So I'm not sure if it would be beneficial to change the behavior for all taps.
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Jon Lang
commented
How about changing the behavior of the “×”? Tap it to cancel the autocorrect this time only, or hold it to cancel the autocorrect from now on.
If you do this, consider adding similar functionality to the other words: that is, holding a word causes it to become the recommended choice in the future. That is, “tap” means “do this just this once”, while press-and-hold means “do this from now on”.