As discussed in this thread, keyman always supposes human error to suggest words starting with a totally different letter, using predictive text. When using the keyman application, users can disable predictive text manually. But in my case, I want to use the predictions for a dictionary app created with Dictionary App Builder. In this context, users don’t want to get suggestions for a word starting on “b” when looking for a word starting with “a”. And, because the keyboard is integrated, they don’t have an option to disable this function (you could argue only a few would understand where the problem lies anyway).
So, my request is: Could you make it possible to disable predictive text in keyman developer?
PS: I make this request, because DAB doesn’t have search suggestions. If DAB had those, Lexical Models wouldn’t be needed.
A) I’m using only the embedded version of keyman in DAB, I can’t speak about the behavior once the standalone keyman app is installed, we don’t expect our users to install it.
B) For test purposes, I downloaded all keyboards from keyman.com. It also doesn’t work with the test version that I have of our custom keyboard.
C) Suggestions generally are not an issue in DAB, if you don’t want them you can leave the Lexical Models in DAB empty and no suggestions will be shown. The problems are with corrections as described above, you don’t want those in a dictionary app. Note again that this will become obsolete once DAB includes search suggestions, but I’m afraid this will take a long time, if ever… so dealing with it from keyman’s side will be quicker.
Thanks for the added detail. This probably requires a change in DAB to control the display of corrections – there is a Keyman Engine API that can be used by DAB to control Keyman Engine’s display of corrections and predictions, but it is not yet documented (see #302). I suggest that you make the request in the DAB forum; we can assist the DAB developers to implement the change.
If I understood you correctly, then Keyman via the API provides all necessary functionality and the question is how DAB uses that? And adding a control for that from DAB side would be simpler than prohibiting corrections right away by writing that into the keyman package file .kmp (by means of an option to do so in keyman developer)?
If yes, then I would rather not post this in the DAB forum, it would be more relevant for them to focus on a “real” search prediction function there. Also, why complicating the matter by making users look for a function to toggle on/off corrections if all they want to do is typing individual words? I guess you don’t expect your dictionary app to correct your spelling, users wouldn’t even understand what to look for.
Correct. However, there’s no need to provide a control for the end user; it could just be a parameter in the setup for the dictionary app. This is far easier to implement than a full search prediction function so may be a good stop gap, although obviously it is not a full replacement for search predictions.