Standardization of command bar command directions

[andrewtavis]

Terms

• [x] I have searched open and closed design issues
• [x] I agree to follow Scribe-Android's Code of Conduct

Description

There's a bit of work that needs to be done to finalize the command bar directions and placeholders. You can see the directions and placeholders by loading up a Scribe keyboard and then clicking the Scribe key at the top left of the keyboard. From there select a command. Specifically:

• The translate placeholder needs to have : after the SOURCE_ISO -> TARGET_ISO part of the placeholder
• The conjugate placeholder similarly needs : after the localized word "Conjugate" in the given language
• The command bar cursor character │ should be black even if the user hasn't typed anything
• The horizontal distance between the command bar cursor character and the rest of the text should be reduced

Contribution

Happy to support with the work here and review when a PR is opened! 😊

[janiceferns02]

Hello, I would like to work on this task.

[angrezichatterbox]

Assigned :) Thanks for taking up the issue @janiceferns02

[janiceferns02]

@andrewtavis @angrezichatterbox

About this point :The horizontal distance between the command bar cursor character and the rest of the text should be reduced

The extra space around the command bar cursor character seems to be part of the font itself. I tried different cursor characters but the space remained or the height was shorter in case of the pipe symbol.

To fix this, I used an EditText with a custom cursor drawable. This resolved the spacing issue.

The only limitation now is changing the cursor color based on user preferred theme dark/light — since setTextCursorDrawable() requires API 29+, but Scribe’s min SDK is 26.

I noticed apps like WhatsApp use a fixed cursor color (green) in both modes. So for now, I’ve set the cursor color to Scribe blue.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5e2e2fa2-2093-4486-8f11-f51a223d9887

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d8c9a34d-7467-4e6d-9db3-63392d7a47ec

Is there a better way to handle this?

[andrewtavis]

Absolutely amazing work, @janiceferns02! I agree with the decisions here 100% and really applaud the initiative here :) We're definitely ready for a PR, and maybe we can do an issue for Scribe-iOS to change the cursor color 😊

[andrewtavis]

@DeleMike, sending along a screenshot to explain the work that's left to be done:

You can see that in the command bar above there are two cursors - one grey and one blue. Ideally we'd do the following to finalize this issue:

• [ ] We'd just have the blue cursor
• [ ] There would be less spacing overall so that it's PROMPT: │ and not PROMPT: │
• [ ] The blue cursor is currently blinking, which it should not

Please let us know if you have any questions on the above, and thanks for your willingness to take this on! 🚀

[DeleMike]

Looking at this now... thanks @andrewtavis for tagging.

---

I have looked at the issues you listed, and I have some questions below:

• Do you mean the scribe keyboard cursor should be the only cursor blinking? and the main one in the text panel should not? That is, it should totally disappear?
• For two, PROMPT: | ; The keyboard shows this for example, Conjugate: | Enter a verb, do we want this now: Conjugate: | Enter a verb
• then for 3, you mean this our scribe cursor should NOT blink, right?

[andrewtavis]

Answers to your questions, @DeleMike:

1. There are currently two cursors in the command bar, and there should only be one - the blue one
   • Another thing we could do is get rid of the blue one and just have the other one, which we apparently can't have a lot of space around, but for Android we could have the cursor be U+0020|U+0020 (with space on either side)
2. There should just be one space around the cursor, so Conjugate: | Enter a verb
3. Yes, exactly

[DeleMike]

what am I thinking now is:

1. remove the blue cursor and leave that vertical divider there.
2. the space is already perfect, isn't it?
3. or if you don't want 1, do you want that we keep the blue cursor but we should not make it blink? and then we will remove the vertical divider?