Add arrow keys to the iOS keyboard | Voters | Soulver 3 for Mac, iPad & iPhone

Add arrow keys to the iOS keyboard

planned

Richard A

These were present in the keyboard in Soulver 2, and were very useful. I'd like to see them brought back to Soulver 3 somehow.

April 25, 2024

Zac @ Soulver

marked this post as

planned

I've added these to the General accessory keyboard. Try it out on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/Vlb55Wtr

Khaled Abou Alfa

Zac @ Soulver Hi Zac, just started playing with this and I’m not sure this solves it tbh. I am mainly in currency mode (rather than general), so this doesn’t really solve my flow as much as I would like. Is there any way to allow the right buttons to be customised and have those arrows as options?

Adam Black

I’m sure finding a place for them is an issue. I’d like to suggest on either side of the ABC/123 toggle.

Richard A

Arrows on the numerical pad. Agree with Khaled - as fixed buttons placed above the divide symbol. The reduced variables bar can scroll so still very useful - thanks for asking

Zac @ Soulver

Any suggestions for where to put these buttons in the new design?

Andrey Piskov

Zac @ Soulver i would kill for soulver 2 layout (single row delete, etc)

Zac @ Soulver

Andrey Piskov: Please tell me more Andrey.

Is it just muscle memory from the classic version, or are there other reasons you'd prefer this layout (with a grid of operators and the delete & return keys at the bottom)?

Andrey Piskov

Zac @ Soulver I dunno if i’m being honest.
For everyday tasks I still use soulver 2 (though I paid for soulver 3 on every platform just to support you) on iOS for three main reasons:
i like swiping keyboard more (i really don’t need those sqrt, e, mod, etc on the main screen);
currency conversion during travel;
more percent based operators (solver 3 only has two on long press);
I mean, it just clicks. Soulver 3 seems like opening some texas instruments calculator (or what have you, i’m from russia :-) ). Soulver 2 is just more user friendly for your track expenses stuff.
Besides that, I stay on soulver 2 because you can reference any line no matter whether it is before or after your current: again more user-friendly.
I really don’t know what would happen to me if soulver 2 is no longer available for download

Andrey Piskov

tldr; may be soulver 3 is ok for new people on iOS, but I would really implore you to rethink what is needed on your iphone vs on your mac. Ie not for your math class or what have you, but for your day to day operations.

That’s why soulver 2 is still an ideal piece of software for me.

Zac @ Soulver

Andrey Piskov: Thanks for sharing your experience. Soulver 2 should still keep working for some time.
Personally I like the Soulver 3 design more because you can have which ever specialized keyboard you need (in my case usually currencies) visible alongside the number pad, without any extra swiping.
Btw, Soulver 3 has a dedicated percentage accessory keyboard too, with more percentage functions than Soulver 2.
Can you give me some details about when you need to use variables before declaring them?

Andrey Piskov

Zac @ Soulver below are a few observations, but my usage may be just a rare corner case compared to how most of your users do it:

Swiping is infinitely easier operation than aim at a small button and then aim at small item in the popover menu (see Fitts's law). = no need to aim, just swipe anywhere at the lower half.

Of course if one could jam 99% action at a custom menu (and most will), it is even better, so I guess most won’t have that issue.

Why I love separate pane for currencies like in Soulver 2: it shows the result in multiple currencies simultaneously (and I always customize top-3 in the list during travel). Again, I guess it isn’t needed for a most users whose native currency is $ or €, but for my travel I usually need to see three simultaneously: russian roubles (to quickly get a grip of how expensive it is), us dollars (that’s usually what’s on my bank card), and any local one like indonesian rupees. In soulver 3 you actually need to convert manually two times to see the result while in soulver 2 you just swipe to the currencies pane.
My percentage quite often involves things like “87% of what is X” (to calculate gross salary from net, which is specific to my country). Which is the second button in % popup in soulver 2 and missing entirely (as a button) in soulver 3 (sure, I can add it manually in custom).
As for why I love being able to reference a line below: I use it constantly on vacation. Top lines are quck stats like total spent that is a sum of days spent below. With additional info about daily average, etc. of how I stay in proposed budget. I like that info at the top with the details of each day added at the bottom instead of constantly adding empty lines for new days in the middle

—

Tldr; sure one could eradicate most of that issues by customizing Soulver 3 (currency pane with live values and backreferincing excluded), but that’s exactly the issue: one need to manually create custom top level bar with operators, also muscle memory is a bitch — all while soulver 2 works exactly right out of the box :-)

So I will adapt, sure, when the end of soulver 2 be nigh but I will delay it as long as I could.

P. S. Writing this comment was a great deal of pain because in mobile Safari it constantly scrolls to the top of the comment and not the current words I type (hence should be the great deal of typos, I apologize but I cannot see what I type)

Khaled Abou Alfa

Definitely a big plus for me. I’m actually reverting back to v2, because this breaks with my workflow that I have established over many years.

Zac @ Soulver

marked this post as

under review

Khaled Abou Alfa

Zac @ Soulver arrows at the top (like in v2), grey them out and then let the top row slide under.