I don't know if it haas been covered.
To get the nice, hidable xkbd from http://pupnik.de/xkbd.html on the n800, you have to install as root these dependencies

apt-get install xlibs libxpm4

(both from http://repository.maemo.org bora/free)

then dpkg -i xkbd_0.8.15m-1_armel.deb

(which you've got from pupnik.de).

Then you can call the virtual kbd from your terminal.

Tried this on an n800 with OS2008. It worked badly. not only did xkbd throw lots of random errors, but also I could not select links in web pages and tab completion in the terminal quit working.

Am I the only one?

PJ

You're not the only one. With xkbd I usually can only type text with Caps-lock turned on. I also have experienced not being able to select links in web pages and text selection goes a little whacko. It all corrects itself once I reset my N800.

Hi, just got a n800 on craigslist. A old Dos man, but I did play with unix in the old days of the internet a bit. Could you break down how to install libxpm4 into the n800. It keeps saying it is incompatible. I am choosing the tos2008 version from pupnik.de.

You can install it using red pill mode in the application manager, to enable it, if i can remember, open a new application catalogue entry, type ¨matrix¨ in the address bar and then hit cancel, a small window will appear, select red pill mode and hit ok and let it refresh, afterwards install the package and repeat the process to go back to blue pill mode.

hope this helps!

thanks for you suggestion, but, I have went to the red pill and then I went to pupnik.de and selected os08 libxpm4 and it still said it was incompatible when I install.

I'm fairly sure the only way I got it installed was to download all of those files over at pupnik.de and place them on my memory card.

After that I opened up Xterm and typed:

root
cd /media/mmc2/

From there I typed (actually copied and pasted) stuff like:
dpkg -i xkbd_0.8.15m-1_armel.deb (or whatever the file names were)

I did this will all of those files.

I believe you also might have to do them in the correct order as well.

This program is still somewhat broken so the only working keyboards that won't crash your tablet can be found here:
Keyboards

Best of luck.

Thanks for responding to my posts and apologies for the newbie questions, however how to I install to root? I install libxprm4 and it asked me, I said yes and it apparently locked up. ( a bunch of lines with Y on it appeared first)

thanks a

sorry again RTFM right. I missed a line in an earlier post and the answer was there. Got it working. Thanks to all.