HeliBoard 2.0-alpha1

[Helium314]

Changes since HeliBoard 1.3:

• add basic support for modifier keys (alt, ctrl, meta and fn)
  • currently there is no way of locking the keys, so you need to hold the key and press another key at the same time (like on a hardware keyboard)
  • as long as customizable functional keys are not added (will happen in beta), the popup situation will be annoying if you don't add the keys on the right side of the keyboard
• add long press functions to more toolbar keys, by @codokie (new pinned toolbar & history view keys long press functions #691,Long press on toolbar icons #686)
• and more clipboard history toolbar keys, by @codokie (new pinned toolbar & history view keys long press functions #691)
• make clipboard history toolbar customizable
• allow customizing all internally used colors (Add more adjust colors options. #529)
• add setting to always show word to be enterd as middle suggestion, by @Volterxien and @codokie (Updating text for middle suggestion settings #739, text to be committed is the middle suggestion #672, Always show word that will be typed as middle word in suggestions row #658)
• add caps lock indicator and slightly adjust shift icons, by @codokie (Add caps lock indicator #692, Add caps lock indicator #683)
• add Piedmontese, by @glemco (Add Piedmontese language #748)
• add Eastern Mari, by @ViZiD (Add Eastern Mari layout #755)
• add Mansi, by @tenextractor (Add Mansi layout #791)
• add extended layout for Kannada, by @pixincreate (fix(layout): add extended layout for kannada #444)
• add extended layout for Hungarian, by @tenextractor (Update Hungarian layout #774)
• overhaul parsing of functional keys and number layouts (prerequisite for customizing the functional key layouts)
  • note that when you used the experimental functionality of customizing symbol and number layouts, you may have a broken layout now
• fix issues with clipboard when quickly switching between keyboard apps, by @codokie (fix deallocated clipboard/emoji views #728)
• fix cut off text in key preview popup on some devices, by @codokie (key press popup text cut off #744, letters in key preview popups doesn't fit #712, Key press popup text cut off #166)
• fix Russian Students layout, by @markokocic (Correct Russian Students Layout #763)
• fix custom action key label exceeding bounds of background when not using key borders (Submit button text overflow #750)
• fix missing diacritics for Esperanto multilingual typing (Missing diacritics when using mixed English / Esperanto keyboard #740)
• other minor improvements and fixes of unreported bugs

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This discussion was created from the release HeliBoard 2.0-alpha1.

[Pentaphon]

Seems more like a 1.4 release than 2.0, no?

[Helium314]

why?

[Pentaphon]

It just seems like a massive jump for a relatively shorter changelog than what we saw on the 1.0 release. I think you should reconsider this large version jump and make it 1.4 and keep the versioning more reasonable. Save the 2.0 release for something truly major. I didn't expect a 2.0 release of Heliboard for maybe a year or two from now.

[Helium314]

1.0 wasn't a big jump from the previous v18 either.
It mostly depends on the versioning scheme you expect.

You can go like browsers and just have a new major version every few months, or you can stick on 0.x for an eternity because not all your planned features are implemented.
You can use the release date as version, or you can just limit your point releases to a certain number and increase the major version after that, or you can use semantic versioning.
Instead of sticking with 1.x for years just because of it, you can also just kick the 1. and have a simpler scheme.

So far HeliBoard had no consistent versioning scheme anyway (1.2 didn't have any code changes compared to 1.1, and even that had just two minor fixes).

[Pentaphon]

1.0 wasn't a big jump from the previous v18 either.

1.0 was warranted because it was the first stable version after the 18 betas that came before it. It showed users that they can now install the keyboard without expecting major bugs. 2.0 for basic support of modifier keys seems...excessive?

You can go like browsers and just have a new major version every few months.

They use that because they receive tons of new features, changes, fixes and security patches. Heliboard isn't a browser. I think you can safely just go with 1.x for a while and save 2.0 for something major like a UI revamp to Material Design 3, a code rewrite, requiring a newer version of Android or something along those lines.

So far HeliBoard had no consistent versioning scheme anyway (1.2 didn't have any code changes compared to 1.1, and even that had just two minor fixes).

Mostly because it's a fork of another project so nobody would expect it to have one. Oh well, I suppose it is up to you, but I think you can slow down because going from 1.0 to 2.0 in a little over 2 months seems a bit much.