On Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:49:50 +0000 Al Johnson <[email protected]> babbled:
> On Thursday 18 December 2008, clare johnstone wrote: > > On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Paul <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Is there a way to make the keyboard pop up on demand, say for the > > > terminal? > > > > Or did you just mean: press the tiny little mark at centre top of the > > screen. A curtain 1/3 the size of the screen will wander down. At its top > > right corner is the word "qwerty". if you press that a keyboard will > > appear. > > Later you can repeat to make the keyboard disappear. > > Yes, it is now frustratingly longwinded. The keyboard icon on the matchbox it's that way because slowly i'm expecting toolkits to be able to auto-popup or apps - it's still there, but i moved it away to make more room on the top bar for other things. it's laid out by theme so it can be changed - but the default is aimed more at the "state of things how they should be right now" > panel is much better in my opinion. Even better would be a keyboard icon that > brought up the default keyboard if tapped, but if held would pop up a list of > available keyboards or layouts. that can be done - though it duplicates the layout selector on the kbd itself > > The keyboard has a sign in some oriental language at its top right > > which causes changes in it. Basically 3 possibles, of which the third > > can be quite useful if you can get it to respond. > > It is "ABC" with the characters overlapping slightly. It needn't be 3 choices > either - you can add or remove keyboard layouts as you wish. You could remove > all but the terminal layout if that's the only one you want. People have > produced alternative layouts better suited to other languages too. > > The top left lets you pick the dictionary to be used for the corrective > input, so you could have multiple languages available. > > > It has the habit of enlarging its characters > > when they are pressed which may be helpful when trying to use fingers > > to type on it but slows it. > > It can be a little distracting, but it doesn't seem to compromise > performance. It seems to keep up with ~4 characters per second - as fast as I > can hit characters in short bursts anyway. Sometimes I get characters from a > long way from where I tapped, but I suspect that's the touchscreen driver > causing problems since I have the same problem with the matchbox keyboard. if you happen to have both fingers pressed at once (as you haven't released 1 before pressing the other) this will happen. this is just unfortunately part of life with a single-touch resistive touchsrceen. (i can come up with hackish workarounds like extrapolating sudden moves to be a new press somewhere else in the tslib driver... but now you're in magic voodoo land and really.. you just should have multitouch). > > It also at times develops a habit known as predictive. > > Corrective would be more accurate, and whether it is enabled depends on the > keyboard layout. The icon in the top left will give you the full list of > potentially matching words, with the exact string you entered always at the > top. > > The quality of correction is heavily dependant on the dictionary, at least > out of the box. The default english dictionary works well, but some have > reported problems with german for example. To some extent this should be > offset if you persevere as it adds spellings and word frequencies to your > personal dictionary, yeah. dictionary quality is the issue. remember i only test with the english one and its decent - once you use it for writing messages/notes for a while (in english) it learns your patterns pretty well and accuracy improves significantly. (some words for some reason are not in there - like 'hello' as i always start my tests with bashing away 'hello world' :)) indeed it is corrective - NOT predictive. it is only intended to be corrective. i don't think predictive WITH fuzzy matching is a good idea as it blows out the potential list of "matches". also it is NOT intended for a terminal - the terminal layout is for that. so you cant compare to tab completion - it is nothing like it. tab completion has knowledge of the context (current directory and file system) whereas the keyboard has no clue about the context. it's trying its best using a dictionary for your language - assuming you are typing regular "english text" (or another language) like writing notes or emails or sms's. that is precisely why a terminal layout exists to add all the extra keys you'll want for using a terminal etc. > > I have actually been shown how this can be made to work on a mobile > > phone where it may have some value. > > Agreed. With the corrective layout I can enter text reasonably reliably one > handed while walking. I wouldn't have a hope of doing this with the terminal > layout, or with the matchbox keyboard. > > > Compared with ordinary "tab completion" in linux commands it is not > > even a starter, and again is a distraction.. > > But for linux commands surely you would use the terminal layout, which > doesn't have the corrective feature enabled, and use tab completion. bingo. :) absolutely correct. > > clare (who really likes the matchbox keyboard - remember that?. It is > > used in the new "hackable"; > > and with apologies to Rasterman; but I do feel strongly on these points.) matchbox keyboard and illume temrinal layout are incredibly similar in their functionality. i don't see how there is a difference worth jumping around about beyond just the "i dont like e therefore do not want its keyboard". > Input method preferences are highly personal. Happily we have a choice of > input methods, and Rasterman included the facility to use them. If you > install the matchbox keyboard, or any other for that matter, it should appear > in the list of selectable keyboards in the illume config (spanner icon). yup. i even uses matchbox-keyboard as my initial tests for "other keyboards". i made it and multitap work. just add .desktop files so illume knows they exist and how to run them for you. matchboxkbd - i don't see the point of. multitap though - i do. :) > I suspect part of the reason people tend to dislike the qtopia and default > illume keyboards is that by default they don't do what we expect, and it > isn't obvious what they are doing. The matchbox keyboard is just an onscreen > representation of a familiar keyboard, and behaves as we expect. It doesn't > require any extra knowledge to get it to do what we want. The same could be > said of the illume terminal layout, but that isn't the default. also one could argue that the invers could be the case. i am trying to answer and sms and do nothing but yell at this tiny pokey keyboard i can barely hit with a finger - and the device has no place for a stylus (and the one that comes with it is so huge i wouldn't be seen dead carrying it). :) you can't win. you make lot A happy, then lot B unhappy. thats why there are multiple layouts to at least give the options to both. the default lean is towards using it as a PHONE - not as a terminal. i would assume the nerds have enough braincells to rub together to switch layout :) > The qtopia and illume keyboards try to be better, as does the iPhone > keyboard, but all require a bit of hidden knowledge to get them to work. Once > you know their secrets they are as good as or better than the matchbox > keyboard, but if you don't know the secrets then they are incredibly > frustrating. > > > _______________________________________________ > support mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/support > -- ------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" -------------- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) [email protected] _______________________________________________ support mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/support
