Hello,
(writing here by advice of Bastien Nocera).
I have an idea for Google Summer of Code related to improvements in the on-screen keyboard. I see this idea as a really important and useful feature to implement, and have already done some background work (including testing the input efficiency). Perhaps GSOC project would be a great help :)
The proposition is concerned implementing additional functionality for the Gnome on-screen keyboard (caribou): heuristics-based autocompletion and spelling corrections, following the model of Android keyboard (taken from AOSP project).
I'm a computer science student of Brest State Technical University (Belarus). During last few years I actively participate in the open source community. Particularly I’m co-organizer of the LVEE conference (http://lvee.org) - a central FLOSS event in Belarus and the largest general-topic Linux-related regular conference in Russian-speaking countries. Also I’m addicted to the ergonomics of a desktop software, and the main developer of the free/libre software suite for parallel usability testing, https://bitbucket.org/AsyaAliset/uxdump).
More about GSOC Idea:
I’ve used GNOME on a tablet for some period and have a suspicion that on-screen keyboard has more space to improve user’s touchscreen experience, in comparison with other parts. Currently it is usable, but... little bit lifeless (same is true for on-screen keyboards of other desktop environments). So I’ve done some testing.
Tests:
I’ve carried out the comparison of a typical on-screen Linux keyboard (onboard from Ubuntu 16.04 was used as a laboratory rat) with the Android one (default open source keyboard from AOSP). Typing experience of about 20 people was tested with use of some biometric measurements to evaluate comfortness with different types of text.
The result of the comparison was presented this autumn on the Russian open source conference OSSDEVCONF, so I have slides to share - https://lvee.org/uploads/image_upload/file/441/Keyboard_as_Co-Author.pdf This is a specially created English version :)
It can be seen that in most cases a heuristic-driven keyboard provides faster typing, lower error rate and lesser physical load even in spite of some wrong autocorrections.
I’ve looked through https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/ScreenKeyboard and have found that I’m not the only person who thinks about adding to Linux desktop some useful features of mobile keyboards (of course, their open source nature simplifies this task a lot) :)
Finally I’ve looked through caribou sources, and feel capable to deal with this task.
I haven’t coded in vala yet, but it would not be a problem after a number of other programming languages, from rather universal C/C++/C#, python, etc. to some exotic (of course I can do some patch or bug fix as a proof).
I would be happy to add my five cents to making GNU/Linux and Gnome viable on tablets :)