[tgtweak]

swype was so good before it got destroyed by Nuance. Gboard's own swipe to type is decent but missing a lot of those features that made swype so much better (swipe once backwards to erase the previous word, loop a letter to double it, swipe up to the suggested word to select it, correct a previous word with the next few words context...)

[arusahni]

It requires more precision than Swype, but GBoard supports multi-word word deletion if you swipe back originating from the backspace key. You get some haptic feedback, and can scrub to adjust the selected boundary.

Unfortunately some of those Swype nicities are patented [1], so other keyboards can't use them.

[1]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7098896B2/en

[tgtweak]

I feel like a clean room opensource keyboard could implement those without any patent liabilities. Software patents are notoriously difficult to enforce and I don't think nuance is spending any money enforcing this given they stopped swype in 2018.

[arusahni]

They're now owned by infamously-litigious Microsoft.

[lproven]

> swype was so good before it got destroyed by Nuance.

100% this. THE best text-entry method for touchscreens. Nuance enshittified it and then Microsoft killed it.

https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2022/06/06/microsofts-sw...