There is a utility ukeyboard from Jiri Benc on the Maemo applications with which I made a 4 row (123..., qwe..., asd... and zxc...) finger keyboard, so switching between keybords for letters and digits is not needed anymore.

His application is on
http://www.upir.cz/maemo/keyboards/

UPDATE 20081002 Improved version with 3 layouts:







Here it is:

http://misc.nicejewel.com/en_NL.vkb

and the ukeyboard def file (you can customize it yourself when using ):

http://misc.nicejewel.com/4rows.def

Put the vkb in /usr/share/keyboards and chmod it to 0644. For the unmodified vkb file the tool of Jiri Benc is not needed.

Then a 'language' "Four rows English" will show up in the control panel under Languages.

Have fun.

Pity i can't thank twice

A quick remake for Bulgarian Phonetic:

http://bundyo.org/maemo/bg_PH.vkb

http://bundyo.org/maemo/4rows_bg.def

EDIT: Oops, forgot the uppercase, update follows.

EDIT: Updated, now its perfect.

EDIT: Updated to working links.

Does anybody know: Is there a way to create a .def-file from the original (compiled) layouts shipped by Nokia? I already did some changes to the German layout using an XML-based format, but it would be nice to further enhance it and make it part of the ukeyboard default set. (there are some flaws in the version Nokia created). I just dont want to write the whole .def from scratch but rather only change what needs to be changed... the way i did before.

I already asked it the author of ukeyboard which he did not have.
I made the .def files which is also a standard keyboard which you can download here:

http://misc.nicejewel.com/4rows.def

which you can edit and 'compile' by ukeyboard.

But, unfortunately, this is not exactly the same as the original Nokia .def files.

How do you chmod? Sorry, I'm new to linux. I have searched for two hours, installed rootsh, tried emelfm2 and xterm, but i couldn't do it. Can you explain it step by step to this newbie?

chmod is provided by busy box, just:
Edit: you need root of course ot place it in proper place.

Thanks, it seems I was trying to edit permissions of a 'symbolic link' file. Lots of things to learn.

Another question. How do you convert .def files to .vkb files? I have read the howto document that comes with ukeyboard, it says run the "make" file. But there is no file named like that. There is a "Makefile" and it doesn't do anything when I try to run it using xterm.

(I have created a keyboard that works fine in ukeyboard)

Updated the 4-row BG phonetic to working links, sorry if someone needed it

Hmm, I can't seem to get it to show up. I cded to the /usr/share/keyboards folder, wgetted it then chmodded, but it doesn't show up in languages. (Hurray for command-verbs).

Edit: Oops, I was looking in language settings .