
How text editing on the iPad should be - superchink
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/05/03/text-editing-on-the-ipad/
======
gfodor
It's neat, but will never happen. The prototype misses the subtle intersection
of all the _constraints_ necessary for good design on the iPad. At a high
level, here are a few that you want to optimize for:

\- Efficiency: how fast can the user perform the task at hand?

\- Intuitivity: how likely is it the user will understand how to use it
without direct instruction? (based upon trial and error, previous experience,
etc.)

\- Consistency: how much is it like other patterns in the same UI/environment?

\- Metaphor: how much does it 'feel' like other real-world objects and
leverages how the user understands them already?

These are of course a sample of high level overlapping themes. This particular
prototype is obviously optimizing for efficiency. It does so very well, but at
a very, very deep cost to the others. It is an undiscoverable interface. It
utterly destroys the direct manipulation illusion of the iPad. It causes the
virtual keys to no longer be metaphorical buttons since you can drag across
them for an effect. It is inconsistent with other use of gestures,
particularly since you are controlling a cursor _remotely_ much like you would
with a mouse (likely a fire-able proposition at Apple!)

The thing that makes Apple's work so amazing is the balance they manage to
strike between these things and so consistently get it right. For a power
user, give me vim, Maya, Photoshop, and other tools that optimize for
efficiency (much like this prototype does.) But when designing things that are
meant to be universally available, a more subdued and balanced approach across
these types of constraints is necessary.

~~~
ecaradec
Apple is doing a lot of undiscoverable things like that :

\- focus to remove an app (people learn that from others )

\- splitted keyboard left & right has invisible virtual keys

\- double tab the button for process

\- kill process by focusing on a process ( very useful when an app has crased,
yet undiscoverable )

\- double tab then slide left for volume

\- screenshot with power + button

\- take a photo with the volume button

Hidden features are very Apple-esque

~~~
falling
_> \- kill process by focusing on a process ( very useful when an app has
crased, yet undiscoverable )_

no. especially if the app crashed all you are doing is removing the icon from
the list.

~~~
austintaylor
I think he's talking about when an app is in a bad state, and you can kill it
to force a cold launch. If the app truly crashed it would cold launch anyway.

------
abalone
I admire the effort but I don't think Apple will (or should) go for it. iOS is
a direct manipulation interface. Swiping over the keyboard to move the cursor
around another part of the screen is really counter to that.

What would make more sense is to add faster direct manipulation gestures.
There's opportunity for that, without throwing out the whole paradigm.

For example, today to select a range of text you:

    
    
       1. Tap-and-hold to bring up the cursor magnifying glass
       2. Let go to bring up the context menu
       3. Tap "select" from the menu
       4. Drag one of the endpoints to one end of the selection
       5. Adjust the other endpoint if necessary
    

But why not this?

    
    
       1. Tap-and-hold to bring up the cursor magnifying glass
       2. While holding, use a second finger to drag out the desired selection!
    

Now that's something Apple might actually go for.

~~~
hej
It’s blow your mind time. Ready?

Double-tap any text you are editing in order to select a word. That also
allows you to drag the endpoints. Tapping with two fingers selects the whole
paragraph.

In short: Tapping places the cursor (and brings up the keyboard if it isn’t
already up), double-tapping selects a word, tapping with two fingers selects a
paragraph. I couldn’t find any other gestures.

If you you double-tap and hold, you can immediately change the selection, but
you are anchored to the word you selected (i.e. you can add characters to the
left or the right but not both). Tapping and holding with two fingers allows
you to change both endpoints with your two fingers.

Web views (and most other views of text you cannot edit) don’t work like that.
In those, you tap and hold to select text. It’s a bit inconsistent, though: in
iBooks (for example), tapping with two fingers will select whole paragraphs.

~~~
Gring
Very cool. This would imply there is a superfast method to select a paragraph
and extend to two paragraphs: Doubletap with two fingers, then drag up/down.
But unfortunately, this doesn't work (it starts scrolling instead). I would
hope that Apple implements this as well.

------
fredley
This is very interesting, and a really great concept, but I don't think a
feature request 'bug report' is the best way to go about this, Apple are
extremely unresponsive to feedback, even when you're reporting legitimate
bugs.

A better thing to do would be to go out, make it, and get it on as many
Android and jailbroken Apple devices as possible. Make it a 'must have'
jailbreak app. It worked for notifications. If it's something that makes
Android tablets easier to type on than the iPad that'll get their attention
too.

~~~
Lockyy
Android is already much easier to select text with. The arrow under the text
that you drag is just so much easier than the magnifying glass that is just
cumbersome and awkward to use.

~~~
davidlumley
iOS allows you to select text using markers that are dragged as well:. The
blue markers you see in <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw2Y7FP8qko> can be
dragged to change the selection area.

The magnifying glass is used to set the exact cursor position, and can be
invaluable when trying to position the cursor between similar looking letters
on a mobile device.

~~~
youngtaff
Text editing and selection on my iPad is a pretty shitty experience compared
to my Android v2.3 phone...

There's lots of web pages where it's impossible to select text (sometimes
turning off JS helps) on the iPad but the phone does it fine.

In some HTML text boxes it's just impossible to edit anything.

Selecting characters within a word is painful, it's far easier on the phone as
it has an optical cursor - later Android phones have dropped this so I wonder
if they're painful too.

------
erickhill
This guy is really smart. Add to the fact that he's seems to be offering this
purely in an altruistic (non-profit) way is beyond cool. Maybe with Apple's
bags of cash they should simply "buy" his idea anyway. Imagine the number of
people this could affect in a positive way. So simple.

------
TwoBit
Editing text on my Android is much easier than on my iPad. I don't know why
Apple goes out of its way to make it so hard. And the Apple on-screen keyboard
with its CAPITALS-ONLY display is inferior to others as well.

~~~
Karunamon
Capitals only? You mean like almost all physical keyboards ever made?

~~~
ehamberg
By your reasoning, virtual keyboards should only have one keyboard layout as
well. Why should virtual keyboards be limited by what's obviously a
manufacturing constraint?

~~~
sambe
The point is to attack the straw man of the oft-repeated "failing" of an all-
caps virtual keyboard. You often see the claim that this is some obvious,
horrible design flaw or even - bizarrely - confusing. I hate to say it, but
usually you hear this from anti-Apple types.

It clearly is not confusing, as it is the same as every physical keyboard, and
that is the point made in the parent. The claim is not "virtual keyboards
should be identical to physical keyboards" any more than others are claiming
"virtual keyboards should have nothing in common with physical keyboards".

Possibly shifting the case would be better, possibly not (is having the text
jumping around helpful? Isn't the keyboard doing the minimal number of UI
changes required to indicate what will happen? Does the international keyboard
key literally print a globe?)

~~~
youngtaff
Using both an Android device and an iPad daily... the all caps keyboard is a
failing...

Having a keyboard that represents what your about to type is much friendlier -
you can also see what character you get if you hold the key down with many
Android keyboards.

Then we have the clusterfuck of the ,. keys, which show !? on them but if you
hold them down you get '"

The iPad keyboard is far from perfect...

~~~
Karunamon
> Using both an Android device and an iPad daily... the all caps keyboard is a
> failing...

Using both an iPhone and a rooted Kindle, and being a computer user for
approx. 18 years, I've got enough experience on the keyboard to know that a
given key will always produce a lower case character unless caps is on or
shift is pressed.

This is not a difficult concept, anyone with any kind of computer use in their
background knows this intuitively.

The only difficulty comes in with telling if shift is engaged or not, due to
the complete lack of tactile feedback. But this is more damning of all
touchscreen devices, rather than just a certain fruit company.

~~~
sambe
The shift key clearly indicates it's status. Much like the Caps Lock key on a
real keyboard. But both answers that a vaguely pro-iOS keyboard have had the
downvote-disagree game played, fairly obvious fanboy-ism.

It is a trade-off. I said that above. Personally I think a trivial concept
that every computer user in the world is already used to has some value in
staying the same. When I first used the Android keyboard I found it ugly and
distracting, and not at all "easier". Exactly the kind of thing that Apple
tends to hate. Note the absence of downvotes I give to people who don't agree
:S

------
uptown
The worst part of editing text on iOS is getting the cursor somewhere in the
middle of a string. It's just a nightmare to accomplish. Android's solution
was to add arrow keys, but for some reason they felt out of place when typing
to me. Love this concept. Hopefully it'll eventually make its way onto
handsets.

------
ChuckMcM
So presumably he's filed for a patent on this technique? (Yes I'm being
serious)

This is obviously a HUGE win. I agree that cursor motion really really sucks.
And if there was an App that added this feature to the keyboard (is there?)
then I'd certainly pay 0.99 for it. So that leaves me wondering about the
whole viral bug report thing.

If I was being cynical I'd suggest that a there is probably a pending patent
on it, and as soon as it is implemented _blam!_ out comes the troll looking
for his payout. While this seems crass and cynical in the tech world in the
world of scripts and movies it is apparently a known, and defended against,
tactic. Production companies being explicit to never suggest any ideas because
doing so with out them asking (and pre-establishing the rights ownership
thing) might leave them open to a 'stolen idea' lawsuit).

~~~
monochromatic
> an App that added this feature to the keyboard (is there?)

This seems... not possible to do via an app.

~~~
MaxGabriel
Um, why not? Before copy/paste was introduced, text editing apps introduced
features to provide that functionality. And the video shows it is clearly
possible.

~~~
kayge
I may be mistaken, but I don't think it's possible for an iOS app's keyboard
to become the "system" keyboard. In other words, you could make a text-editing
app with a keyboard using this feature, but it would only be usable within
that text-editing app.

~~~
pallinder
You are totally correct. On android, however, its another story and something
like this could be implemented and used on a "system" keyboard.

------
lucian1900
I think it's sad people let Apple be their paranoid abusive parent. This
developer can't even make his own keyboard app.

Look at Swype on Android, it's both excellent and usable on any phone. There
are tons of other alternative text input apps to choose from, too.

------
egypturnash
Oh god I want this, or something similar to it. Because that little lens that
pops up is a TOTAL PAIN IN THE BUTT when you keep your fingernails long; the
close-up on the cursor is usually hidden by my fingernail. Every time I use my
Nexus One to edit text, and move the cursor around with the trackball, it's
like heaven compared to my iPad. (IMHO the stock Android autocorrect is also a
ton better than IOS - I really hate that tiny little blue text that pops up
beneath a word, and I hate iOS's refusal to let you go back and edit out its
miscorrections even more.)

I've only had something like this happen once before, when I tried using some
third-party controller hanging around a friend's office to try the game he was
working on, and physically could not press the buttons because of a little
ridge just above them, positioned perfectly to catch my thumbnail when I
brought my thumb down.

tl,dr: if your product involves people poking at it, find a person with long
fingernails and see if she can use it.

------
firefoxman1
I'm surprised no one has mentioned how this feature was implemented in the
Palm Pre/Pixi a few years ago. That was one of my favorite little things about
WebOS.

When editing text, you held down the Orange key and then drag your finger
anywhere on the screen and the cursor followed. And to select text, you did
the same thing with the Shift key instead.

~~~
dvdhsu
The problem, though, is that I still had to take my hands off the keyboard.
This doesn't require me to.

~~~
joeblossom
That's only because those devices didn't have an onscreen keyboard...

------
micheljansen
I like it, but it's not perfect. First of all, I don’t think dragging one
finger on the keyboard should have any effect. The iPad’s current keyboard is
very forgiving when I mis-press a key initially and move my finger to the
right key. This should not cause the cursor to move. An easy adaptation of
this solution would be to just use the two finger gesture for moving the text
(if you want to move it faster, just use the “tap and refine” strategy I
mentioned earlier).

Additionally, I wonder how text selection would work when typing with one
hand. I rarely use an iPad the way it is shown here, laying on a table in
landscape mode. Perhaps in addition to using shift, holding the two finger
gesture could also initiate “select mode”. That way, selection can more easily
be done using one hand.

------
vilya
This looks great! The lack of cursor movement keys is probably the biggest
problem with text editing on the iPad.

Textastic on the iPad also has a great idea: they've implemented (not sure
how) an extended keyboard, with an extra row of 5-way keys. Tap them and they
give you the character in the middle of the key, touch and swipe towards one
of the four corners and you get the character on that corner instead. It's
amazing how much quicker this makes editing. The one thing it's missing is
cursor movement keys (they have Home and End, but nothing finer grained), so
I'd love to see it combined with features like those in the video.

~~~
tedmiston
From a development perspective, the keyboard is just another view. You can
subclass it, or if that's been made unneccesarily difficult, you can just
create your own custom keyboard view from scratch. Several apps in the App
Store already take this approach.

------
antirez
I bet there are a great deal of people like me that don't use / purchase
tables because of the poor keyboard experience. With a real keyboard I can
type _fast_ , faster than I can speak, faster than I can write using a pen. My
interaction with a computer always was this way: my ideas can flow fast to the
form of text, code, emails, and so forth. With the iPad I feel dumb, because
I'm no longer fast enough, and I refuse this kind of interaction. However the
new text editing proposed on this story fixes part of the problem, but not all
unfortunately, still it's a great step forward.

~~~
sparknlaunch12
A stylus type pen device would be the best alternative to touch typing on a
touch screen.

This is currently available for touch devices but not that frequently used. I
am not sure why?

~~~
zevyoura
Because stylus' are another thing to keep track of, easy to lose, and it's not
seamless to switch between touch input and stylus. And people don't handwrite
all that much faster than they can type on a virtual keyboard.

~~~
sparknlaunch12
The new Samsung Note comes with a S-Pen that I believe retracts into the
device. The Samsung Galaxy SII works with a stylus. Early tablets (from the
90s) came with similar pointing/writing devices.

Do people type faster because of predictive text?

------
mekazu
The qwerty keyboard was designed to prevent the jamming of metallic parts of a
typewriter. Surely it's time to put this metaphor behind us? People have
migrated easily from typewriters to computer keyboards, and from pianos to
synthesizers (depending on the synthesizer) but neither metaphor works
effectively for a touch screen. A touch screen is unable to provide the
necessary physical feedback to let the instrument 'flow'. Even using the
finger as a cursor doesn't work anywhere near as well as a mouse or a stylus
when editing text.

Touch devices require a breakthrough in text input if they are ever to become
useful for creative output of large chunks of text. We all learned to SMS
using a 12 button mobile phone pad in the '90s, people have spent months and
years learning vim and emacs (despite their lack of intuitivity, consistency
and metaphor), why can't we get away from qwerty keyboards today?

I don't have any suggestions, but people must be coming up with better non-
qwerty ideas all the time. Where are they?

~~~
chronomex
I'm rather fond of the MessagEase keyboard on Android:
<http://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php>

------
stephengillie
The solution is simple: an optical trackball.

The HTC Incredible has one. So do Blackberrys. It does exactly what the OP is
asking for.

------
pixelcort
Don't forget some international keyboards, such as the Japanese Kana one, rely
on swipe gestures to input characters.

------
jacobolus
One of those cases where relative rather than absolute manipulation is a big
advantage. I could see this being a nice feature on PCs as well (modifier key
+ mouse movement to change text cursor position, rather than precisely moving
the mouse pointer and clicking where desired).

~~~
lukifer
I've wanted this for ages, especially now that I do everything with a trackpad
right below the keyboard. (I wish I was a better Cocoa dev.)

------
antidoh
I don't have and have never used an iPad.

When I watched this video I was thinking "You mean this isn't how iPad typing
works already?"

If I had an iPad, and typing worked this way, _I wouldn't even notice it as a
thing._ Of course it would do this.

------
tree_of_item
I don't understand why this person thinks spamming Apple's bug tracker will
increase the chances of it being implemented. It's not a bug.

I don't understand why this person cares whether or not Apple agrees with
them. The whole point of having a device capable of universal computation is
to be able to make it do what you want without other people's permission.

A better use of time would be to implement this functionality for a computer
that wasn't actively hostile to end-user extension. Android software keyboards
sell quite a bit I believe.

------
booticon
It looks like this person put a lot of thought into how text editing could be
improved in iOS, and the video is well-made. However, a great feature of the
iOS keyboard is that if you press the wrong key, if your finger is still on
the key, you can drag it over to the key you intended to use. Has he taken
this into account? It would be pretty frustrating if I made an almost-typo,
and instead of inputting the intended character, my cursor moved around.

~~~
peterkelly
The behaviour you described is specific to the iPhone. On the iPad, if you
press on one key and move to another, it releases the original key and ignores
the key press.

~~~
booticon
Well, I stand (somewhat) corrected!

------
a5x2h9k41l
Can you attach a real USB keyboard to the iPad?

(Note the project on Kickstarter that seeks to make and iPad look like a
MacBook.)

If you can't attach a keyboard, why did they do this? (The) iPad would make a
good portable display.

Of course, an iPad makes a good coffee table piece. Pick it up, touch the
screen, gaze at it, put it down. Wow, amazing.

~~~
biot
<http://www.google.com/search?q=ipad+attach+keyboard>

~~~
a5x2h9k41l
First few results are about "attaching" Bluetooth keyboards. Not USB. Then
there's a Wired story about how overpriced iPad compatible wired keyboards
are. So I take it the answer is generally no. My conclusion is the intent of
the out-of-the-box iPad is not to let you type. Which is a very interesting
design decision.

~~~
biot
Your third line starts with "If you can't attach a keyboard..." and the answer
is that you can. For the purposes of typing I don't see why you'd care if it
was USB or Bluetooth nor whether it's physically attached or wireless.

~~~
a5x2h9k41l
Ah, the classic "Why would you want to do that?" response.

If it's an uphill battle to attach a USB keyboard, I'm not interested.

Whatever display quality Apple has achieved with the iPad will soon enough be
standard in all displays.

Apple's overpriced products are considered "obsolete" soon after you buy them
anyway- they just release a better version months later for the same or a
lesser price.

I'm happy to watch the tablet fad come and go. Meanwhile a portable display
would be nice.

------
greggman
This seems U.S. centric. Isn't drag on keys used to select accents? Maybe some
subtle timing thing make decide did you want the accent menu or did you want
to move the cursor.

Dragging is also currently a correction thing. You can press 'E' then drag to
'T' if you that's what you meant. I don't know how many people use that
feature though.

~~~
wiredfool
Dragging up on the comma and the period give you ' and " respectively. I'm not
seeing what you're saying on clicking E and dragging to T. Doesn't seem to do
anything here.

I find the iPad's text editing to be one of the biggest flaws of the device.
Even on short things, like this comment, there's invariably some point where
I've mistyped something by putting a space in one character early, and the
only reasonable way I've found to correct it is to retype both words.

~~~
greggman
My bad, dragging E to T is an iPhone thing. It doesn't do it on iPad. I had
assumed they were the same. They're not.

------
peterkelly
This looks awesome; I'm just in the process of adding this to my own writing
app right now. I have cursor movement working and am just getting onto the
selection mechanism.

Should be finished in couple more hours. Anyone want to test it out and give
me some feedback once I'm done?

~~~
ptaoussanis
Well that was quick ;)

In principle really like the idea of something like this- especially in the
context of an app like yours where you're targeting long-document writers.

How's it feel to use in practice? I kind of liked the suggestion elsewhere
here about needing 2 fingers to do the scrolling to prevent the cursor from
accidentally running away.

~~~
peterkelly
I haven't had a chance to use it much but I definitely think it's an
improvement over the existing mechanism. I already had some extra keys for
cursor movement similar to those of IA Writer but this is better for moving
across multiple characters.

I ran into a problem with the two-finger gesture, which is that Apple already
use this for putting the keyboard into a split mode (see
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyQTkZjvSok>). So I'm currently figuring out
how do deal with that without preventing people from using the split keyboard.
I've emailed the guy who did the video about how he did his implementation but
haven't heard back yet.

~~~
ptaoussanis
Hmm, interesting- didn't know about the split-keyboard thing (I'm only on
iPhone).

I've been thinking about what else might be an alternative but am coming up
short. More than 2 fingers would be impractical on an iPhone.

Question: In the video you linked to, the split-keyboard gesture looks quite
specific... 2 separate fingers dragging away from or toward one another. I
guess it's asking too much to hope that the device could distinguish between
this kind of dragging and scroll-style dragging (2 fingers together, same
direction)?

BTW I'm assuming this'll be up in the next beta sometime? Would love to play
with it.

~~~
peterkelly
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to solve this by testing that both fingers are
moving in the same direction (you have to move them apart to split the
keyboard), and filtering some of the touch events before they reach the
application if necessary.

And yes this will be in the next beta. I still have to finish off the styles
and table stuff but will hopefully have it ready in a few days.

------
zomgbbq
I could implement this pretty easily in an app or as a library that people use
as a replacement for the existing keyboard. So while I could not fix built-in
apps, it could be a nice fix for downloadable apps. The only question is if I
build it, would people come?

------
lamby
> Set the title to “Editing Text on iPad (duplicate of rdar://11365152)”

 _twitch_

------
Too
Firefox on Windows already has this feature. (i don't think its a feature of
windows because it doesn't work in other programs)

Try scrolling sidways with your touchpad when you have focus on the url-bar...

Hold control to scroll word by word.

------
pazimzadeh
This is great. Apple's Bug Reporter UI is not so great:
[http://f.cl.ly/items/2G0o0n391o1V3b003C1v/Screen%20Shot%2020...](http://f.cl.ly/items/2G0o0n391o1V3b003C1v/Screen%20Shot%202012-05-03%20at%207.00.30%20PM.png)

~~~
stinky613
Holy crap! I can't believe how antiquated that page looks. If I photoshopped
the "© 2012" to "© 2002" I think I could convince people that your link was
the one that had the copyright year forged

------
Kilimanjaro
Some people complain about swiping over the keys? Then add a scrollpad at the
bottom of the keyboard where you can perform the same swipe to place the
cursor. And use the shift key to select, same as the video.

I like that idea a lot.

------
sparknlaunch12
Android and Apple text editing is painful. The dreaded auto complete does not
help things. I don't think this feature is as good as it can be.

It will be interesting to see how the bug reporter works in grabbing Apple's
attention.

~~~
Johngibb
I hear a lot of complaints about the autocomplete, but it definitely makes me
way more productive. It correctly fixed 6 words so far in this comment even.
And, it can be disabled. Why hate on it? (there were 3 more fixes :) )

~~~
kalleboo
My problem with the autocomplete is it loves "fixing" words it doesn't know. I
never had this problem with the autocorrect in SwiftKey on Android, which was
always really good at know when it was wanted and when I was typing something
else.

The other thing I hate about autocorrect is how I have to move my finger to
the other side of the screen to say "no I don't want to correct to that".
Android keyboards put the correction suggestions right above the keyboard for
quick access. I have toubles typing the tiny blue "x" on the iPhone, and half
the time accept the incorrect correction by mistake.

Taken together with the small screen, this making typing on an iPhone
massively more frustrating than to the Android I switched from.

------
Unoeufisenough
I also can recommend a MUCH better way to input text into your apple device
that works today. It looks a lot more like this:
<http://www.apple.com/macbookair/>

~~~
jasomill
Sucks for coding, though; not enough RAM or screen space. This
<http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-17inch.html> is a much nicer option,
especially with an SSD.

As an enthusiastic owner of all three iPad models, I've found that "wanting a
keyboard" is a very good sign that whatever you're doing isn't a good fit for
the iPad.

With that said, here's an iOS feature that'd be very easy to implement:
application-level "passthrough" mode for physical keyboards. Not only would it
allow for better "traditional" editors, the fact that iOS doesn't rely on the
keyboard for OS-level navigation would make it a perfect vehicle for VNC and
RDP clients with "transparent" keyboard support.

I could understand Apple prohibiting the use of such an API for accelerators
"merely" to discourage half-assed ports of traditional WIMP apps, but why not
allow the use of a physical keyboard as an "IT controller" just as they permit
external controllers for games? It's simply unreasonable to insist that
developers build a more "touch-based" interface to fundamentally non-touch-
based remote systems, and nearly as unreasonable to expect professional
programmers to adapt to a "touch-based" UI paradigm for _editing text_. The
fact that the Cocoa text edit controls play well with Emacs-style key bindings
is, for me at least, a HUGE advantage of OS X, one that'd be very hard to
usefully duplicate in Windows.

~~~
ricardobeat
What do you mean by "passthrough mode"? External keyboards (Bluetooth or USB)
already work with any text field.

------
rythie
It's nice, but some arrow keys would be easier to understand for most people.

------
prawn
How would you maintain consistency when it came to selecting text when the
keyboard wasn't present? I like it otherwise. As everyone knows, selecting/etc
text on iPad is a pain.

------
codysoyland
I'm surprised nobody seems to be addressing how easy it would be to
accidentally move the cursor while using the keyboard.

Neat idea, but I don't see it happening.

~~~
peterkelly
In my own implementation I've added a movement threshold, so it only starts
moving the cursor after you've moved your finger a certain number of pixels
(currently 44) from the point at which you originally put it down. I've found
this avoids problems of accidental cursor movement.

~~~
ptaoussanis
Great idea!

------
rplnt
Can't you just make it as an app? Why would it have to be there by default?

------
czzarr
i wish there was vi mode for iOS. seriously it would work great

------
guelo
Some corporation better not go out and patent this idea.

------
drivebyacct2
Why would you waste effort implementing this on an iPad? The developer must
know that it's not possible to distribute and that it's extraordinarily
unlikely that Apple would make an exeception or utilize it themselves.

Meanwhile, it probably would have sold tens of thousands of copies in the
Android Market already.

edit: Wow, the article even includes futile instructions to spam Apple's
feature tracker. I'm sure they appreciate that move.

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joedev
Like it!

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parfe
Talk about wrong tool for the job.

I understand you spent a lot of money on the iPad. I don't understand the
obsession with editing on it. If you need to edit text, then get a laptop.

Text editing is a round peg people keep trying to jam into an ipad's
rectangular hole.

edit: I'm sorry you all spent so much money. You're still using the wrong
tool.

~~~
reason
How does that have anything to do with improving the iPad's existing type
functionality?

Plus, my mom (and I assume many, many others) has completely switched over to
an iPad and manages all of her emails on it. I'm sure she'd appreciate better
editing features. I myself use my iPad to do some light email managing when
I'm out, and I too have issues with how tedious editing text is; so an
improvement is more than welcomed.

