Notices

please please please make a QWERTY keyboard would play for that right now.

Could you make a smaller version of this?

I find VertSMS buttons a bit big, which makes farther buttons harder to reach with right thumb. But yours look promising too. Just my opinion.

Now this is what we need... a global landscape / portrait vkb...... !!

need to be able to easily change it between qwerty and current style in either portrait or landscape and have auto rotate then the N900 would be the perfect device!

it already has GPS app (turn-by-turn) and MMS, now it just needs global portrait with auto rotating vkb (between landscape and portrait.)



THANKS w00t / frals !

Question woot if this would be implemented already how would the default applications be rotated to portrait? Should we do the shift+r thingy to make it portrait everytime or you would implement a global orientation changer also? I mean it wouldnt be right if keyboard is portrait but the application isn't right?

i always ask for this

QW ER TY keyboard i think is the best of both worlds and with predictive input is even better

(BB pearl style or nokia e55 keyboard)

a QWERTY version would be gr8

I would say, IDEALLY, it should be possible to select between a qwerty and T9-ish version for both the portrait and the landscape keyboards separately. But I realize that's extra coding and possible headache-inducing-bugs, so as someone who's not in a position to contribute, I don't have room to complain. But if you're aiming for an integrated keyboard that's useful for every application in portrait mode, that would probably make the community at large experience all the more joy from the end product.

That said, honestly, if I'm able to make myself at all useful for this project before it's done, I'd be happy to contribute.

- EDIT -

And while I remember, massive thank you to the people working on this. Between this and the possibly-to-happen USB-host-mode I read about a couple of days ago, this is pretty much all the N900 needs to be perfect in every way for every-day-use in my book.

full Keyboard/T9 switching using accelerometer would be great. I know it's hard to achieve that but there is always a posibility. Remember? Nokia 5800 has both T9 and virtual Keyboard. Also the SONY Ericsson SATIO has that too. I'm sure it is possible to make them switchable with an applet

Anyway, after wandering around for a while thinking of how awesome this project is and how I looked forward to using it, I suddenly went - "wait, usually when a topic has [Announce] in it, there's something already being released," (at least so it seems so far), so, being that I, like all newbs following proper precautions, have had Extras-Testing and Extras-Devel enabled from the day I got my N900 (seriously, I may be a programing and Linux newb but I figured I could figure out how to reflash if need be - totally worth it), I went and checked app manager, and there was the portrait keyboard, all nice and shiny and waiting to be tested.

That said - at first I couldn't get the virtual keyboard, until I thought to check the instructions in the first post. "killall hildon...whatever-the-command-was" (just looked it up again hildon-input-method), and it worked like a charm. I spent about five minutes typing this post one-handed in portrait mode. (N900 is heavier than I notice when using both hands on the physical keyboard, turns out.) Then I just barely tilted the device beyond a not-exactly obvious point, and it switched to landscape, lol, so that was time well spent. I'm guessing making the entered text able to stay between mode switch would be high on your to-fix list, so I'm not complaining. That said, I find I often like to lie sideways while entering text so if possible, a lock button on the keyboard would be nice at some far off future which allows you to toggle on/off rotation. I don't know how complex that would be, but since it only needs to effect the vkb itself, I hope it wouldn't need too much programming.

Anyway, beyond that, text entry isn't too painfully slow except for when I hit a word using two letters in a row on the same key. (I hated typing "feels", lol.) One thing I would like to see implemented (which you may be intending to do) soon is switching the caps key from a toggle to a more typical hit-once-for-one-capitalized-letter, hit-twice-for-caps-lock arrangement. Maybe that's a your-mileage-may-vary thing though, so ideally you could put that into settings too, but I personally think the toggle is less practical for quick text entry than the more standard cell-phone shift-key behavior (but, of course, your choice if you have to go with only one).

Even before you get T9 behavior, if you can get the cursor to flash or highlight the letter being worked on that would be great (this too might be something you're already planning to do). I think the same code can probably be then extended to whatever word is being typed once you get T9-like functionality. The main thing right now is that you can't tell how quickly the vkb will let you type the next letter, or if it's still holding the previous letter hostage in case you hit the same key. I was also surprised that upon backspacing, the letter before the deleted one was 'taken hostage' again. I'm not sure if this was intended, but if it was, the aforementioned cursor-flashing/high-lighting would help. I also notcie that while normally you may be able to hit, say, a 3 immediately after typing a B, and it'll go to Bd, if you have, say, "BT", and backspace the T and then immediately hit 3, it'll override the B with a d. (Let me know if that's unclear and I'll try to explain better.)

The only real obvious "bug" right now is integration with all the programs. I tried it, so far, with Conversations (works perfectly), Notes (works perfectly), X-Term (doesn't actually enter the text when you close the vkb - you enter text, but when you press the button to hide the vkb the text doesn't appear - I also got some lag when switching between portrait and landscape in X-Term with vkb open, BUT I think that was just a random moment, not vkb related), MicroB (same as X-Term for every text box. I figured this out when trying to log in here [attentive readers will remember I started typing this post in the vkb - this was because I was planning to type, copy+paste, and then log in, but by the time I logged in I decided to go with hardware kb - trying to half slide open the keyboard to Ctrl+C the post would not have been worth the risk of losing all of this if I had typed it in vkb]. I also tested this in google's search box and the actual post entry box here, so it's not just password/username entry fields or this site - if you already have text entered in the box, it brings it up in the vkb, but when you close it additions aren't saved - though I only tested adding text at the end - maybe additions elsewhere, deltions, or replacements would register - I think not though; but, it does work perfectly with MicroB's address/search entry field), fMMS (works perfectly), FireFox (the one from Maemo select) (same for in-page text boxes as MicroB - keyboard just doesn't come up for address bar), Midori (vkb works perfectly for address bar, doesn't come up for text boxes in-browser), X-Chat (Works perfectly), Opera (over-ridden by Opera's own virtual keyboard, which is just fine by me because yours will be vastly supperior soon, so unless some blasphemer wants Opera Mobile over MicroB, that's not a problem. Seriously though, you may be able to see if you can override Opera's and give that option to people who want your vkb with that browser, though that's likely to be more of a pain to code into happening).

So, over all I like. Indeed, the above is amazingly good, non-buggy functionality for something that's just released. It also gave me no problems with the Marina theme on my N900 - I wasn't expecting it to, but others may have, so extra reassurance there. Pretty much I think all you need to sort is MicroB's in-browser text-box entry, and the rest of the browsers would fall into place (just my barely-educated guess, though..). If I used my N900 as a phone rather than as a very tiny netbook packed with awesome, this vkb as-is would fullfil almost all my needs with just the above tweeks, as it's almost good enough for comfortably texting/IMing as-is, I think.

Now, who wants to tell me if this is actually where I should be putting my feedback (and where do I vote on this)?

I'm trying this at some time That keeps me away from learning