How does HeliBoard learn? Is the personal dictionary the result of the "learned data"?

[BerziOnline]

Hey and thank you for the great keyboard!

I am coming from swiftkey and I am trying to understand the way HeliBoard works and especially how it improves by learning?

So what I see is that I have two options I have activated:

• personalised suggestions
• suggestions for the next word

Under "text correction" you can also check your personal directory.

So what I am wondering about is:
Is the personal directory the result out of these both settings I mentioned? Or are these different things?
If these are different things, where can you see the really learned data out of the typing behaviour? (one feature says, that this is also exportable?)

And what is the personal directory about and when is a word being added to this directory while using HeliBoard?
My directory is nearly empty, but not totally empty - what is even more confusing to me :D Because how did these few words came in? (but a lot of others I typed, didn't?)

I am sorry for my n00b-questions, but maybe someone could help me a little bit to understand O:-)

[Helium314]

Is the personal directory the result out of these both settings I mentioned?

The personal dictionary is (by default) the Android system dictionary where you can add your own words (by language).
Your typed words, including previous word data, go to the user history dictionary (when personalised suggestions is on). When exporting, this data is in UserHistoryDictionary. When you want it in a readable format, a simple way is to use debug settings to dump the dictionary and then save the log.

And what is the personal directory about and when is a word being added to this directory while using HeliBoard?

A word is added if the related setting enabled, and the typed word is not in other dictionaries (except history), and the typed word is in history (meaning you previously typed it without deleting it immediately).
This is certainly not perfect, somewhere there is an issue about this being too aggressive.

[BerziOnline]

Alright I see, thank you very much for your explanation!!

So let me conclude what I have understood and may I asked a few further questions for clarification O:-)

• The main "intelligence" of word suggestions personalized for me and my typing style is not really the personal dictionary, it is more the history dictionary, right?
• So the ongoing improvement and individualization of my HeliBoard is happening more over this history dictionary than over the personal dictionary (how I thought before) - is this correct?
• After your decription how a word is filled in into the personal dictionary the simplyfied case would be most times typing a word twice in a while and it will achieve to be filled in there, is this correct? (first time it's new and not in history, second time it was in history and now it's moved on to the dictionary - correct?)
• Could you explain what you meant by using debug and dumping to make the history readable? (as you said, the exported files wasn't really readable :-) )
• If I have about 9.000 words exported from my last 10 years of using swiftkey, would it a good idea to boost the learning process here importing them into the personal dictionary? (although I have learned now, that this has not too much to do with the clever personallized word suggestions as long there is nothing imported in my history from that?)

Thank you very much and sorry for asking a lot!
But I found out, that many of my friends here moved to HeliBoard and had the same questions in mind O:-)

Thank you!

[Helium314]

The main "intelligence" of word suggestions personalized for me and my typing style is not really the personal dictionary, it is more the history dictionary, right?

Correct

So the ongoing improvement and individualization of my HeliBoard is happening more over this history dictionary than over the personal dictionary (how I thought before) - is this correct?

It depends. Words from personal dictionary are suggested more frequently by default, but they do not have any previous-word context. But most learned suggestions are likely to come from history.

After your decription how a word is filled in into the personal dictionary the simplyfied case would be most times typing a word twice in a while and it will achieve to be filled in there, is this correct? (first time it's new and not in history, second time it was in history and now it's moved on to the dictionary - correct?)

Correct

Could you explain what you meant by using debug and dumping to make the history readable? (as you said, the exported files wasn't really readable :-) )

You need to go to advanced -> debug settings. If you don't use a debug version, these settings are only shown after you tap on about -> version about 10 times.
There you have the option to dump dictionaries, which creates log entries. You can read the log using logcat, or save them from app to file using about -> save log.

If I have about 9.000 words exported from my last 10 years of using swiftkey, would it a good idea to boost the learning process here importing them into the personal dictionary? (although I have learned now, that this has not too much to do with the clever personallized word suggestions as long there is nothing imported in my history from that?)

I have no idea about the format used by swiftkey. If you only have words without any additional information, you could add them to personal dictionary, so they can be used as suggestions right away.
If the words also have some sort of previous-word data, the ideal way would be to import it to history. But currently this is not possible.

[ghost]

@BerziOnline

If I have about 9.000 words exported from my last 10 years of using swiftkey, would it a good idea to boost the learning process here importing them into the personal dictionary? (although I have learned now, that this has not too much to do with the clever personallized word suggestions as long there is nothing imported in my history from that?)

A custom dictionary like this is a great benefit. I've written a lot about the dictionaries and building a DIY custom dictionary here to improve typing.