Merge languages

[Playye]

Is it possible to combine two languages? I use Czech and at the same time I intersperse English words quite often. So it would be great if I didn't have to switch languages, but T9 would offer both Czech and English words at the same time.

Thanks. By the way, Great job.

[sspanak]

Technically, it is possible. I can make it search among all enabled languages. However: a) I am almost certain it will cause performance issues; b) I've seen that Type Nine for iPhone can guess which language you have in mind and suggest words from it, then automatically switch to the other one, when you mean to, but I have no idea how to do this. I can only make it mix the words from both languages, which may not be so convenient, especially in the case of 2- and 3-letter words.

There is also an alternative. It is possible to create a merged language that contains words from both. It will work fast, but again, it will provide mixed suggestions, not favoring any language when you want to use it. If you are interested in a do-it-yourself solution, and have enough disk space for Android Studio, I can provide instructions how to do it.

[AmirShaeiri]

Type nine uses combination of statistical analysis various dictionaries and also language models and machine learning to guess what language user is typing .that's something hard to do for a self develope project

[sspanak]

I am talking about this Type Nine. Similarly to TT9 it is also developed by one person and it does not rely on cloud backend. I don't think it does such advanced analysis to guess the language.

[Playye]

> There is also an alternative. It is possible to create a merged language that contains words from both. It will work fast, but again, it will provide mixed suggestions, not favoring any language when you want to use it. If you are interested in a do-it-yourself solution, and have enough disk space for Android Studio, I can provide instructions on how to do it.

Please provide me with instructions. Thanks.

[sspanak]

Please provide me with instructions. Thanks.

1. Install Android Studio and set it up. See the development instructions.
2. Go to app/languages/dictionaries.
3. Find en-utf8.csv (English word list) and copy its contents into cz-utf8.csv (Czech word list).
4. Optionally, you can delete all other languages that you are not going to use to save some storage space. To do so, delete the .csv files, then go to app/languages/definitions and delete the respective .yml files. IMPORTANT: Do NOT delete English.
5. In Android Studio go to Build -> Build Signed App Bundle / APK
6. Select "APK", then follow the process to the end. Once done, Android Studio will tell you where the APK is.
7. Copy the APK to your phone.
8. Uninstall the current version of TT9 that you have been using.
9. Install your APK. You may have to confirm this is a security risk and you know what you are doing. Android may also prompt you to enable installing custom APKs. If you are having difficulties check the Installation Guide. The process is the same as installing the GitHub version.

It is not mandatory to create a signing key, if you don't want to. If so, follow the instructions above until item 4, then do the following:

1. Switch your phone to developer mode.
2. In Android Studio, go to Build -> Select Build Variant, then choose "fullRelease".
3. Go to Run -> Run 'app'
4. In the popup window do not change any settings. Only press the "fix" button if you see it, then select the "Debug" key from the list.
5. Press "Run". If the installation fails, uninstall manually the TT9 version you are currently using, then try again.
6. Disable the developer mode. It may cause your phone to work a bit slower and use more battery.

[Playye]

@sspanak Thanks a lot. I am super satisfied. There was a bit of a tricky part with duplicate words after merging, so I had to get rid of them because of validation.

It is awesome now. Thank you. Beer is on the way.

[sspanak]

Thanks a lot. I am super satisfied.

I am glad to hear that. Enjoy! And I now have a guide how to merge languages. People have asked me before how to do it. From now on, I'll reference them to this discussion. Super useful for me too!

You can merge more languages too, just don't make too big dictionaries, unless you have a high-end phone. I haven't tested with huge ones, but I believe the reasonable limit for low-end devices is about 2 million words.

There was a bit of a tricky part with duplicate words after merging, so I had to get rid of them because of validation.

I am terribly sorry, I didn't think of this at all! In the scripts/ directory, there are a couple of Node.js scripts for easy processing the word lists. If you have Node, you could have done it using a single command:

node scripts/remove-dictionary-repeating-words.js cz-CZ /path/to/the/merged/file.csv --prefer-lowercase > app/languages/dictionaries/your-new-language.csv

[Playye]

@sspanak
I have had both a challenging and enjoyable experience dealing with duplicate words- because there were so many of them. I was surprised how many. So there was no chance to delete them manually. To find a solution, I decided to ask AI (Ollama + llama 3.1) for assistance. Since I am not a coder, it required quite a bit of "debugging", but we managed to get it done. In the end, it was just a simple Python script that completed the task. For me, as a random human being, it was a cool adventure.

The possibility of using the Node command is great. It will help others a lot.

Back then, my clumsy thumbs were driving me crazy on that miniature stupid keyboard. That was more typos than accurate hits. Now I can finally type without stress and live in peace.

Many thanks for TT9.

[sspanak]

Final comment.

You would probably want to stay up-to-date and benefit from any new features and bugfixes. To do so, just move aside the .yml and the .csv files you created, pull the latest TT9 version, then move back the language files and build a new .apk by following the steps above.

How to pull a new version? If you want to update to, say v44.0:

1. Open a terminal (I think it is called 'command prompt' on Windows).
2. cd /the/path/where/tt9/code/is
3. git checkout master
4. git pull --rebase -p
5. git checkout v44.0. Replace v44.0 with the version you want.

If git says there are conflicts, just make sure you have backed up the language files, then do git reset --hard HEAD and try pulling again.

That's it!