r/gboard

I analysed the different letter variants you can access by pressing and holding the keys, after being annoyed at some missing letters I use to write foreign words. I found that there are many useful missing letters, many letters that have been added for seemingly no reason, and strange partial language support.

There may be some mistakes in my analysis. Please correct them constructively.

Most Western European national languages are fully supported. With the exception of Icelandic, which makes writing ð and þ annoying. Most Slavic languages aren't fully supported, a big part of that is the inclusion of š without ž or č.

Strangely, ĉ is included, but none of the other Esperanto letters are included, so I assume this is a mistake, and is intended to be č.

There are a ton of letters that are strange combining diacritic sequences, that don't seem to be used in any languages that I can find. ǖ, ụ̈, ụ̄, ü̃, ǜ, ö̃, ȫ, ö̀, ǟ, ä̃. Some of the sequences with ü could be used for Pinyin, but many other letters would be missing, and it doesn't explain the other inclusions.

ḷ, ẽ, and ỹ are weird inclusions, not being really used in any (significant) languages that I can find. ḷḷ may apparently be used for Asturian for /ts/ in some dialects, but the lack of support for other minority language systems makes this unlikely to be the intention. ḷ can be used for Sanskrit transliteration, but then it would be missing a whole lot of other letters.

ʃ and ə at least have general application in linguistics and are fine being here.

ń and ś are strange inclusions, as they are used for Polish, but most of the rest of polish isn't supported. Similarly for į, ụ, ė in other languages.

I would recommend removing the strange sequences (ǖ, ụ̈, ụ̄, ü̃, ǜ, ö̃, ȫ, ö̀, ǟ, ä̃) as they just take up space, replace ĉ with č and add ž, ans remove the number of other strange inclusions.

Turkish letters (ğ, ı, İ, ş) would also be much appreciated, as well as a better Polish letter selection (ą, ć, ę, ł, ź, ż). The letters ð and þ are good for general utility, not just for Icelandic.

Not necessary but useful would be the Hungarian letters (ő and ű), Romanian letters (ă, ș, ț), and potentially the missing Welsh letters (ŵ, ẁ, ẃ, ŷ, and ỳ).

The Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Latvian, and Croatian letters would be nice, would likely take up some more space, so the general usage should be examined further.

The letter μ would also be quite useful for measurement (μm, μg).

Edit:

I realised what's happening... it's from multilingual typing! A ton of these weird diacritics are because I have an English/German (Switzerland)/Dutch keyboard.

ǖ, ụ̈, ụ̄, ü̃, ǜ, ö̃, ȫ, ö̀, ǟ, ä̃ are apparently from the Swiss German keyboard?? I literally have never seen these letters.

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