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1. mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jul-2023 08:01:02 UTC mcc

   A thing that's a big frustration to me is Microsoft bought my favorite Android keyboard (SwiftKey) awhile back, and roughly the moment they bought it they stopped ALL feature work on it. So I've got some minor but persistent UI complaints about SwiftKey, like you can't enable a language's accents without enabling its autocomplete, or you can't (since Microsoft bought it) disable Flow. These fixes will never happen, no matter how many people request it. https://support.swiftkey.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115002583005-Disable-flow-AND-gesture-

   • mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jul-2023 08:01:00 UTC mcc

     in reply to

     It's frustrating because open source end-user software is of persistently lower quality than commercial, but in the long run —only open
     source software exists—.

     Every closed source program (and some corporate OSS) is on an invisible timer for either the company to get bored and shut it down* or one of the increasingly small number of Big Companies to buy that thing you rely on and set it on fire**.

     * Why oh why did I trust BitBucket?
     ** Microsoft has already discontinued SwiftKey for iPhone.

   • mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jul-2023 08:01:01 UTC mcc

     in reply to

     I wonder if there's an open source keyboard out there which *looks and feels exactly the same* as SwiftKey. Or how much work it would be to take AnySoftKeyboard (which seems pretty close) and patch it until it's SwiftKey-identical, so I could get the SwiftKey experience plus whatever minor features I want.

     It's rough with keyboards because it's something you use so constantly it's like it's part of you. The thought of switching to something else is like thinking about replacing a limb.

     James Broadhead repeated this.
   • mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Jul-2023 08:01:02 UTC mcc

     in reply to

     Working with Tusky has reminded me how great open source is if you're a programmer: If something's broken, you can just fix it. This is something you rarely notice on Android because Android itself, and all official Android apps, are a kind of pseudo-open-source where the source is available but it's real hard to build outside Google. You have to download Google's git extension tool and clone *all of AOSP* to build one app. They assume you're $GOOG internal and have access to the network drives.