This is food-for-thought for future mobile design capability considerations, and not a post in need of an urgent response.
I was considering the heights of mobile keys for layouts with 4 and 5 rows, and thought the heights were in excess of what they really need to be. The heights, and height/width ratios look natural -probably because they resemble what we are accustomed to from decades laptop and desktop keyboards. The rectangular and square shapes of these keyboards are probably done in part for manufacturing convenience. Comparatively, typewriters used circular keys for a long time.
In both cases, the mechanical keyboards are designed for a larger finger contact area (like the fingerprint area). When typing on a virtual keyboard, Iāll use a much smaller contact area, just my fingertip, or part of my thumb. I think the keys could be half their heights, and everything would be fine; I wouldnāt type with a greater error frequency. So I suspect, I donāt know how idiosyncratic my own typing style is.
For keyboard designers who would not want to change all key heights to something smaller, they may still find it practical to apply height change for some rows -such as the top or bottom rows where control and modifier keys would be found.
My interest in shorter key heights (assuming width remains the same), is to also arrive at overall shorter keyboard heights. Anyway, please consider making row-height configurable in a future Keyman mobile revision.
What is the governing principle for row heights presently?
Row height, via overall keyboard height, is controlled by the end user, in the settings for the Keyman mobile apps ā introduced in v18 for Keyman for iPhone and iPad, earlier in Keyman for Android.
The keyboard height will be the same for all keyboards, both for simplicity, and to reduce the ābounceā effect when switching keyboards. This means that 4 row keyboards will have taller keys than 5 row keyboards.
I looked into Keymanās height adjustment settings and was surprised by how good it is. Before trying it out, I had made a mockup (image doctoring) of what I was wishing for, some images below:
The screenshot from Keyman, is nearly identical to what I had come up with. The Keyman resizing perhaps could trim off more from the bottom of the keys (the space below the letters and bottom of the keys), but itās a minor difference.
I think the vertical scaling is good for some keyboards, but not others. Iām still wanting to adjust heights on a per-keyboard basis. That desire would override my annoyance from a ābounceā effect, which would be anticipated, not surprising. So maybe this could be a setting consideration for the future.
I am not sure how we would do this ā which setting would take precedence? It seems like it would be a lot of effort in terms of UX design and I am not that keen ā we have a lot of work we want to do on the OSK itself which seems like a much higher priority. What do you think?
