Hello again,

For the wide keyboard sides to work as two independent letter keyboards, you must enable multi-touch first (Settings > Advanced Options). One you set that, then a legend (ABC/123) appears on that otherwise empty button. Once this is set up, you can also use two fingers to drag away from the hand, thereby separating the two parts. Like this:

They become like this:

And of course, you can resize the keyboard to fit your need.

About changing the geometry and matrix size: honestly it requires a lot of work and we are quite small, very resource limited. It is quire impractical to dedicate our resources to take this one when the number of people using it are going to be quite small.

Best,

Saied

Some people, like DreymaR, will want to (nearly) fully customize the complete layout, but others may merely want to swap a few letters to better fit their native language, like some of the localizations you already include.  For example I would like to swap H with either D or L to accommodate Dutch/Flemish.  Accidentally, you offer both of these combinations already (as Spanish and Italian, respectively), but it won't be scalable for you to research & implement localizations for all languages and alphabets.  Therefor I also think it would be worth making it fully customizable, but perhaps hide it under advanced options?

For the size of the keyboard though, I am convinced 3x3 is really the best size – at least for smartphones.  I tried similar keyboards with more keys, but quickly found the keys too small.  With ME it is impossible to mistype a key.

You can also just drag left with one hand, hold it, and then drag right with the other. :-)

It's already there. :-)  I+upright = enter, S+downright = space, T+downleft = backspace.  (see "inhibit CR in blank" under advanced options, yeah, not the best place to document this...)

So technically yes you could get rid of one row.  But like you said offscreen swipes are harder.  Btw, you can actually swipe down-then-right instead of straight diagonally, this can be easier depending on the position.

Thats a nifty program.  I do not have a smart phone, but if I did, I would be tempted to try it out (and even more tempted to move letters around).

I do think you could benefit by a utilizing a more advanced digraph frequency analysis. 

For example: Although H is a common letter, 54% of the time it is preceded by a T (ignoring when H is the first letter), and 42% of the time its followed by an E (ignoring when H is the last letter).

Without trying to hard, this is a possible alternative:
A I L
N O R
T E S

T>E = H
N>T=D
O>N=M
E>O=C
O>E=V
O>R=U
N>O=G
etc...

Here's how I envision an easy-to-remember-yet-optimised Colemak-MessagEase pad now:
• Generally top-row outwards, bottom-row inwards (but the gDb column has to be fit in somehow).
• Punctuation is placed partly using the columns as mnemonics (ARSTD → !@#$%), partly as in standard MessagEase.
• Like in standard MessagEase, the up/down swipes on the left column are reserved for locale characters like ÆØÅŒé...
• I think the standard MessagEase parentheses are hard to use (off-edge swipes) so I gave them a better position.
• Note that 4 of the 9 main keys (AHOE) are in the same place for Colemak-MessagEase and the classic ANI/HOR/TES!

+-----+-----+-----+
|•    |` ^ ´|  • •|     A→UL: Combine (for the ~`^´¨ accents); S→UR: Enter
|• A !|? R @|# S •|     A→L/S→R: ←/→ navigation
|~   z|/ x \|c ° ¨|
+-----+-----+-----+
|{   =|q w f|$ • }|
|[ H k|j O p|v T ]|     T→U/D: Shift on/off
|<   _|l u y|b • >|
+-----+-----+-----+
|&   m|" g '|d % €|
|| N (|) E ;|: I →|     S→U/I→D: ↑/↓ navigation
|•   -|+ * ,|. • •|     N→DL: Backspace; I→DR: Space
+-----+-----+-----+

Yeah, that looks sweet. I can't help but wonder what Saied will think of it. ;)

HOT indeed! ;)

You're right, I didn't think of that. Better now, with the semicolon "shifted" up? Heh, that's like on the locale keyboards too: Semi-/colon in shifted positions over dot/comma.

It feels to me as if they'll be easier to remember this way at least. Time will show?

Of course a digraph isn't the same here. Using these mappings will ensure a low number of same-key digraphs (tap-drag combos) but those may not be so problematic. When dual-thumb typing I think same-key has a slight disadvantage but not as much as same-finger on a full keyboard.

I've been having fun with the remap functionality in the new version of MessagEase (v8.0.2 for Android)!

   
   The standard MessagEase layout (with most symbols active) to the left,
   and my "Colemakoid" version with mnemonic mappings to the right (with ÆØÅ and Ç special letters on the left-hand column).

The ANI HOR TES tap letters aren't remappable to ARS TOH NEI or whatever I'd like to use (see posts above) but that's no deal-breaker: The tap letters are very quickly learnt and I'm sure ANIHORTES is a first-year spell on Hogwarts. ;)

I tried out different systems, and ended up with the QWFPG/ZXCVB left-hand top/bottom rows on the 41236 keys as shown, upper row pointing up visually on 123 at least. The right-hand  JLUY/KM fit in on the 789 keys and I found it most intuitive to stick with the upper row above there too. Fortunately, this puts common letters like DL in decent positions (and CUMWFGYP in okay positions) I think. The one extra letter in this setup is the not too common G (2.0%) which works well on a diagonal drag from R so the more important D (4.3%) can have the center drag. Most of the drags work well enough anyway, so I don't think it's worth fretting over the relative frequencies of the rare letters at any rate.

Symbols are placed by their number keys, so !@#$%&* are on the 1234578 keys as expected (except that the 5 key is full so the % sign goes next to it). The ^ isn't on 6 because the 6/R key is busy and all the accents are gathered at the top. The -+=_ symbols are placed around the 9 key as on a normal keyboard.

On the 123 pad, I placed fractions/superscripts/†‡ more consistently, put square root on the 2 (for square) key, ∞ on 8 and integral on the same key as + (9) because that made sense to me. Pilcrow has roughly the same shape as 1 (not that I ever type ¶ in an SMS, heh...).

I'd like to have the drag-arrow keys back because I'm not good at using the Space bar to navigate back and forth (I keep inserting spaces when I try to navigate multiple times in a row). It would've been cool to be able to remap to those! (Saied: Yes, I know you guys are busy. No sweat!) Maybe I'll get used to it eventually.

We can't yet remap the drag-return mappings so when I move the !? their ¡¿ drag-return counterparts are still in their original place (between 2 and 3). Too bad - unless you prefer to use the Compose key for those anyway. In the future I think we'll either be able to remap those as well or they'll follow their drag-release counterparts automatically. At present, the drag-return mappings aren't even properly documented so they're a bit work-in-progress (but nice for us glyph freaks!).

Ghen is probably already too expert with the standard MessagEase setup to benefit from this or want to use it (congrats on breaking the 50 WPM speed barrier btw!). But for me it feels a lot more intuitive and hence easy to learn. What do you guys think though?

Perceived elegance could be important for acceptance! It's certainly helped Colemak versus the overdone Dvorak and chaotic Arensito for instance.

I just hope that it won't be any slower in any way. I shouldn't think so but it's hard to tell, really.

According to the white paper the layout has been designed to minimize finger travel when using one finger.

And that's how I use it, holding my phone with one hand and typing with the other (and I've achieved 54 wpm so far).

I think the best way to use two hands is the split mode (with multi touch enabled), but personally I prefer the portrait orientation.

Is there any way to set MessagEase up as Android's keyboard for the password-unlock screen?  I currently have an unlock pattern set up because entering anything with the default on-screen keyboard is a chore, but this keyboard looks like it might just change that.  The pattern is nice because I can enter it without looking at the screen, but I'd consider switching to a password for slightly better security if I could use a halfway-decent keyboard to enter it with minimal trouble.

Hmm... my phone came with Swype installed and set as the default keyboard, and even after setting MessagEase as default my password unlock screen looks like it still uses the crap Android basic on-screen keyboard.  Android 2.2.2, LG Optimus V... maybe older versions did not allow this.  Good idea on the hidden keys... haven't thought of that.