Incompatibility with various Android keyboards; wrap vosk-android in IME service (especially for standalone use/accessibility) about vosk-android-service

[aboveagency]

This feature we're discussing will add much needed functionality for the growing number of people who want to use degoogled phones. For the sake of user experience and adoption I would suggest packaging the IME/Recognitionservice functionality into one app unless the services would impact each other.

In this way, the related FOSS keyboards (FlorisBoard, AnySoft) could point to this one app/project and drive more attention to it.

I'd also say that Sayboard (https://github.com/ElishaAz/Sayboard) may be the correct project to bundle all of the services together along with a voice keyboard.

The maintainer has suggested the app is supposed to be a companion voice IME (ElishaAz/Sayboard#4) so its heading that direction already.

From the user side, it makes sense to download one application that serves as an IME, Recognition Service, and a standalone voice keyboard with an apt name like Sayboard.

Looking forward to seeing the collaboration.

[Kaljurand]

I think two general principles make sense:

• an IME app (especially one that wants to be known as "open") should offer a single-click (or single-swipe) access to the Android speech recognizer (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/speech/SpeechRecognizer) and to the previous and next IMEs (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/inputmethodservice/InputMethodService#switchToNextInputMethod(boolean)), i.e. at least 3 buttons, via which the user can access related services outside of the IME app. (The user could of course be offered a setting to remove these buttons from the UI.) (I've followed this principle more or less in https://github.com/Kaljurand/K6nele)
• an app should do one thing and do it well, e.g. an app that provides RecognitionService (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/speech/RecognitionService), should not have to provide also the InputMethodService (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/inputmethodservice/InputMethodService).

The second principle is a bit problematic in the current Android, where it is not easy (for the end-user) to install multiple apps at once and use them in combination (regarding locating them in the app store, assigning permissions, etc.). So it unfortunately makes sense to bundle several independent services into a single app.

[nshmyrev]

For IME thing there is also ElishaAz/Sayboard#25