(I think Dreymar's quite taken with MessageEase.)

@innovine, do you think it's possible to use 8pen blindly?  Also @dreymar, could you use MessageEase on a numpad without looking?

Never without looking, as there is no tactile feedback at all, but a half eye is enough.

Also, the ME keyboard can be made (semi) transparent so to regain screen space "behind" it, although I haven't managed to set this up yet.

Ok, I just tried it again, and it seems to depend on which app you use it with.  Eg. a Chrome window shows the current webpage under the transparent keyboard when entering a new URL, but the standard Android browser does not.   With SMS or Memo, the text window is also still limited to the space above the keyboard – and even then the keyboard is dark, so you lose twice.

I have the same problem as Ghen with transparency it seems: The keyboard is on a black rectangle no matter what, so the only thing transparency accomplishes is making it hard to see. I've mailed Saied about this. I suspect it's a device thing.

On a physical 10-button phone pad you could actually type blind with the MessagEase layout! And you'd have to, as the pad wouldn't have ME markings anyway. The blind mode for the touch screen apps have a circle in the middle to help you see where you are. I'd love to use that with a functional transparency mode, as the circle and grid would cover very little of the background!

When I had made my "Colemakoid" mappings of the non-tap letters, I found that I could type blindly with them almost immediately (not fast at first though). I was very happy about that. Too bad Pafkata didn't get the same benefit; don't know if it worked so well for me in part because I created it, or whether it'd work as well for some others.

And yes, I'm taken in. I'm happy as a child about this. So are ghen and pafkata, from the looks of it! ;)

Yes, the "ck" digraph is nice, and "would" is almost too easy. :-)  The worst for me is "ij" (pretty common in Dutch pronouns).

Regarding the keyboard transparency, I think that's just how it works in Android (and each individual app), and not much MessagEase could do about.

For blind typing and no screen size loss, I think a physical GEKOS keyboard on the back of the phone would be best.  I tried the Android touch implementation but it's really not the same.  Nifty how they made the chords (optionally) available as drags as well though.

Pafkata90 and I had some off-line discussion about this, and we came up with the following proposal for a Russian layout:

+-------+-------+-------+   +-------+-------+-------+
|       |       |       |   |       |       |       |
|   А   |   Н   |   И   |   |   A   |   N   |   I   |
|   ч ж |   л   | х     |   |     v |   l   | x     |
+-----------------------+   +-----------------------+
|   ъ   | я у п |       |   |       | q u p |       |
|   В к | ц О б | м Р   |   |   H k | c O b | m R   |
|   ь ы | г д й |       |   |     _ | g d j |       |
+-----------------------+   +-----------------------+
|   ё ю | " ш щ | ф     |   |     y | " w ' | f     |
|   Т   | э Е з | № С   |   |   T   |   E z | # S   |
|       | , . : | ;     |   |       | , . : | ;     |
+-------+-------+-------+   +-------+-------+-------+

We submitted it to Exideas and they like the idea, so it may appear in a MessagEase release soon!

No, Flanders (Belgium), I'm not from Holland, please! ;-)

Ok I've given up on 8pen now. Although it was actually very fun and interesting to use, I found it both inaccurate and difficult to correct mistakes with (a lethal combination) and also very, very slow. It was just way too frustrating. I'm already at 20wpm with MessagEase and climbing slowly.

In the long term though I think the 8pen style holds some potential. It would be awesome to recognize the curves and changes in direction, rather than where you enter and leave the central circle. This would solve many of the accuracy problems, and give (without needing to look) a feel close to natural handwriting. It most certainly deserves to be placed closer to handwriting recognition than a virtual keyboard. You could think of it as its own alphabet of letters all composed of loops and curves.
And on the other hand, keyboards are twice as fast as handwriting, so it's probably doomed as an input system.

I don't know about the flow; as mentioned, lots of ME feels rather random, but it's working nice and I like that I can do english and swedish. It's growing on me quite a bit actually.

You'll learn the letter positions in no time and it wont feel random. It took me less than two days for this.

I've got to say it depends a lot on how you type. If you type with two thumbs I personally find only the diagonals between TO and SO (both ways) somewhat uncomfortable from all the letter positions. But more important, I think, is to stick with whatever you've started with. I mean if you've started with one layout and switch to another arrangement with the idea that it'd be easier to memorize.. I think that works the other way around – it's just confusing.

As to optimization – I think there is need for optimization just so, that you don't have to type often used pairs of letters with uncomfortable motions that provoke errors. The default English layout, I've found does this pretty nicely.

And yes, after further discussion with Exideas and some tweaks to the layout, our Russian translit layout has been released with MessagEase 8.3.  It's really intuitive to type on when you already know the English/Latin layout, much like Rulemak wrt. Colemak.