Colon in the suggestion bar deletes leading whitespace, affects emoji search feature

[sudoshindo]

Describe the bug

When typing a word, followed by a space, and then followed by a colon... the space between the word and colon is deleted. This is annoying behavior when trying to use the emoji search feature.

To Reproduce

1. Type any word
2. Type a space
3. Type a colon (EDIT: specifically using the colon on the suggestion strip/bar)

Expected behavior

Nothing should happen, all the characters typed should be untouched.

Screenshots

N/A

App version

3.8

Device:

• Model: Nokia/HMD Pulse Pro
• OS: Android 15

[sudoshindo]

Additional info:

Apparently this only happens if I use the colon on the suggestion strip/bar. Still annoying though.

[eranl]

This is one of those cases where the keyboard tries too hard to be helpful IMO. There's specific code that detects this case and "corrects" your typing by swapping the punctuation and the space.

We could add a setting to control this behavior, but I think that would be setting overload.

@Helium314, would it be acceptable to turn this behavior off if inline emoji search is on and there's an emoji dictionary, even though the setting is on by default?

Tip: if you hit backspace, it undoes this swap.

[sudoshindo]

I just think that the colon should have consistent behavior no matter which button I use to type it.

I've not tested the other characters on the suggestion bar, but those should be consistent too.

I think letting uses disable the keyboard's "helpfulness" is overall a better solution (all autocorrect behaviors for spaces and symbols). Making exceptions for emoji search introduces more edge cases.