On Screen Keyboard

Warning. This is PRE ALPHA testing grade only software. It may cause your pre to melt into a puddle and dissolve while turning blue. Use at your own risk!

Introduction

The Palm Pre ships with a very limited on-screen keyboard for inserting symbols. It works in portrait and landscape, in all apps, in all fields. This on screen keyboard provides a basis for programmers to develop a fully functional on screen keyboard for the Pre.

Explanation

On an unmodified Pre if you press the "sym" key and a scrollable 5x5 keyboard pops up full of alternate characters.

This is controlled by code incorporated into the framework.js. The specific functions there can be seeen in /usr/palm/frameworks/mojo/submissions/191.15/javascripts/widget_charselector.js

with the layout controlled by 3 files in /usr/palm/frameworks/mojo/submissions/191.15/templates/charselector

the actual list of characters that appear on the screen is controlled by /usr/palm/frameworks/mojo/submissions/191.15/resources/en_us/alternatechars_table.json

At the simplest level then, creating an on-screen keyboard requires editing the alternate characters table json, to add the "regular" charcters to it, and then when you want a keyboard, press SYM and poof, a keyboard. The problem with that is, the alternatechars_table.json is "fragile" the slightests mis-edit results in the pre entering a continuous book cycle.

At the next level, the framework's copy of widget_charselector.js needs to be modified to not close the keyboard after each keypress.

As of 12 August 2009 Webos-internals contributor Eric Gaudet (irc egaudet) announced success at patching the framework.js to accept a new function derived from the charselector widget. This pre-alpha proof of concept on-screen keyboard is available as a patch.

Procedure

The patch is on Gitorious, please read the following to install the patch: Applying Patches

The patch should be stored (on Pre) in: /opt/src/modifications/frameworks/add-onscreen-keyboard.patch

There are also theme images needed in the current release. Folow these instructions to install the patch AND the theme images (NOTE: must be root)

sh /opt/src/modifications/install add-onscreen-keyboard.patch
sh /opt/src/modifications/frameworks/install_theme

Change Log

8/13/09 - Fixes

• Functional backspace, space and enter keys added.

8/16/09 - Fixes

• Added functional shift and sym capabilities.
• Added landscape mode resize.

8/18/09 - Fixes/Enhancements

• Added theme capabilities
• Changed default theme to use remix2000's images (big thanks!)
• Added missing symbols
• Fixed landscape mode to correctly render in landscape if launched from that state.

Thanks again to remix2000 for the nice keyboard images. I'll have specs up eventually for the images/theme framework once I implement a user-app callable way to switch themes.

8/18/09 (evening) - Fixes/Enhancements

• Increased width of keyboard to span entire screen
• Added orange-key functionality
• Made keyboard draggable after tapping blank key
• Added haptic feedback

Issues

as of 17 August 2009 the following issues are known:

• Do not bring up keyboard when using hard keyboard clipboard events (might have to disable the keyboard when slider is open exposing hard keyboard)
• Enable usage to search contacts/universal search -- for example Name, email address, etc are search fields not text fields.
• Verify auto-correct when space added.
• Add clipboard capabilities
• Explore T9-type, limited-width keyboard options