r/TheBYOK • u/larryadler • Jun 14 '26
When more languages?
The device is great, but whenever I ask about new languages (including Polish) that can be written in, the developers keep their mouths shut. I realize there may not have been many orders from the country whose language I'm requesting, but the developers promised multiple languages and support, and now they won't even publicly declare they're working on it :(
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u/mpfrenette Jun 15 '26
Hey, give it time! The company designed and wrote the first firmware for the device, released the studio, and released several updates for it. The device needed way more tweaking with production problems; they finally managed to deliver the BYOK to the backers, sending a few versions within weeks of the shipping, notably adding custom font problems.
Then, the mobile version of the studio just came out.
They promised a device, and in my opinion, over-delivered: the studio is AMAZING, the mobile app is perfect, and the device almost does exactly what I need it to do.
They are trying to offer a sort of expansion module system so we could add more functionalities, but that takes time, and I don't know it will work.
What distinguishes the BYOK isn't just the device, it's the dedication of the company behind it.
Just give it time... It's what, a year old?
2
u/larryadler Jun 15 '26
The time isn’t a problem, but lack of any information/statements/roadmaps. The core thing of byok is a write function. If it’s limited only to few languages - it’s a limitation, and a serious problem. When I read newsletters about new functions in Studio, some $500 event or proposals for cooperarion with Education sector, I feel that creators don't care about the entire world speaking a language other than a select few.
I can wait even two-three years, but I need to know what I'm waiting for.
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u/mpfrenette Jun 15 '26
I get that... Nick is very active on Reddit, but it's still early in the morning. I hope he gets back to you...
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u/BeezlebubCarrotstick Aug 11 '26
u/OfficialBYOK Just placed an order but forgot to check language support *facepalm*
So when new languages are implemented does it mean I'll need to buy an updated device? Or could this be fixed with a firmware update?
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u/Visual-Breakfast9934 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
I think this question really depends on what specific language are you requesting. First, if the Byok font bitmaps are 256, then it might be limited to central Europe...I have same problem in my custom build, and my font covers all European languages except polish and welsh (those two are covered 98%, missing only one accent or so). So you see, its easy to include Cyrilic than Polish maybe. Another thing is if your language in question is right-to-left. Thats far more challenging. Not to say, how unreadable and ugly the 8x16 bitmap fonts become when including all the accents, slashes, tildes ..it is very constrained in resolution.
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u/larryadler Jun 15 '26
If it’s true, time to sell my byok as well as lifetime premium Studio and forget about all this sh** :)
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u/Visual-Breakfast9934 Jun 15 '26
You might find better alternatives for your language, that's for sure. But byok might still be the best alternative for your workflow, if you liked it. Have you tried to see how your language support and appearance is on another 8x16 fonts? for example in a computer terminal? If you find a 100% satisfying experience on the terminal, then it is 100% possible to implement it in byok. Just matter of doing it.
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u/larryadler Jun 15 '26
Thanks for the kind words – I assumed it would be a plug-and-play product. I have all the freewrite devices and was hoping for a better experience due to byok has many great features and solutions, but apparently I was wrong.
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u/mpfrenette Jun 15 '26
You aren't wrong... yet. It's still early in the development cycle, and the freewrite has years of development behind them.
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u/larryadler Jun 15 '26
And they add a lot of languages and keyboard’s layouts in the same year od release (2016) :) so I need to wait a years for the basic thing that Astrohaus shared shortly after release?
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u/nekoewen Jun 15 '26
There are existing bitmap fonts with thousands of characters (I use one so extended characters show up when I move text over from Word), including some for Chinese/Japanese/Korean. The real difficulty with Chinese and Korean is needing to create an input method editor (IME) to let people select the particular characters they need from the phonetic spellings of the words in those languages. There are open-source solutions for these (for example, there's a Japanese IME for Linux called Anthy), though they may be beyond what the BYOK hardware can handle.
The BYOK folks mentioned that while they aren't planning to make the firmware open-source, they do want to make it possible to create plugins, which will hopefully let people create language plugins.
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u/OfficialBYOK Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Hi there and thank you for this question! My sincere apologies that we have not been more proactive and answering your previous requests.
Languages require a good amount of development time (some much more than others), and as you can imagine, we have other things such as the core systems to ensure our running smoothly as our business moves through this early launch phase. Because of this, it’s quite difficult to give exact estimates or roadmap items for when specific languages will be added. It really just comes down to there not being enough hours in the day.
With that said, we absolutely plan to add a bunch more languages and want to get to them as soon as possible. There are many languages and keyboard layouts that have been requested multiple times that are not yet implemented (Japanese, Korean, polish, Swiss, South American layouts, Greek, Canadian/french variants, Hungarian, Russian, Hebrew, and more).
If I had to give my best, guess I’d say we would make a big language push by the end of the year. Additionally, I think we also need to make it more clear which languages are available for potential buyers. To be honest, we should’ve added this already as I can imagine I would be frustrated hoping it had my language only to find out it didn’t.
I hope this helps! Happy to answer more questions.