Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Pythonista 3.3 Includes a Keyboard Extension

Ole Zorn (tweet):

First off, this is not intended to replace the system keyboard or your preferred third-party keyboard for most of your typing. It’s much more like the emoji picker, i.e. you’d typically switch to it just for specific tasks.

[…]

You can use the keyboard for simple things, like quickly inserting the current date/time in your favorite format, or even show a custom UI, like a calculator, in the keyboard view (or above a standard QWERTY keyboard).

[…]

The keyboard module includes keyboard-specific functionality for inserting text, modifying the cursor position, showing user interfaces in the keyboard, and more.

With no global menus or keyboard shortcuts, keyboard extensions and Siri are the ways to add functionality to an app on iOS.

Previously:

Update (2020-02-28): Tony Meyer:

New Pythonista custom keyboard gives me a repl in the keyboard, even in Textastic!

And I can add practically any script as a new keyboard button. Tempted to use a third-party keyboard for the first time ever.

Update (2020-03-12): Dr. Drang:

Because only modules written entirely in Python can be installed by the user, the number of non-native libraries that come with an iOS Python app determines how broadly useful the app can be. That’s why, despite its many flaws, I have hopes for Pyto and don’t regret buying it. Giving me the ability to write the kinds of scripts I need to for work covers up a lot of shortcomings.

And seeing Pythonista back in development again has made me cautiously optimistic about it again. The developer clearly knows he needs to get on the Shortcuts bandwagon if he wants his app to be a significant player in the iOS automation world again. I think a lot of ground has been lost to Scriptable.

My dream would be for these two apps get into a competition with each other. If that happened, I might be able to put off learning JavaScript for another decade.

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