[Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts

[Stskeeps]

This is an experiment in trying to source the Talk community in order to help you get your country's keyboard layouts into our on screen keyboard in Mer.

Basically, we've found that him-arabic (the input method for arabic) is actually a keyboard layout engine (it reads from XML), and we would like to ask -you- to help contribute keyboard layouts so we can have full support for your preferred layouts.

The layouts are XML files (UTF-8) and very simple. An example of Arabic can be seen here with the graphical version seen here. The example of english layout can be found here

Basic structure:

* <him-arabic>
** <layout mode="0"> (0 meaning shift not pressed, 1 means shift pressed)
*** <row> repeat these elements per row you want
**** <key name="character" expand="1 if it should expand and fill - look at the space button in the image, 0 otherwise" />
**** Add as many keys as needed in the row
*** </row>
** <layout>
** Make both a shift not pressed and shift pressed layout.
* </him-arabic>

We currently have:

Arabic
English
Hebrew
German (by thp)
Finnish/Swedish/Norwegian (by Meizirkki)
Russian (by 412b)
French (by fredoll)
Portuguese-speaking countries (Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, etc.) (by Bobbe)
Italian (by debernardis)
Persian/Farsi (by Claudius)


- will update list as new layouts come in.

When posting please do it in the following manner:

* Attach the .xml file to the post
* Acknowledge that the layout is licensed GPLv2 or later, and write what name you would like to be acknowledged with in AUTHORS
* Indicate which keyboard layout it is
* Any comments related to the layout.

If anyone wants to help extend him-arabic (it's c++) to make it a more generic keyboard engine, come talk to us in #mer on irc.freenode.net

Thanks in advance!

[Matan]

Some notes:
* Number of rows is not fixed at four. It can be less, or more, and the keys will be resized accordingly.
* Current layout is a bit different - there is no "special keys" key, it is replaced by "shift-lock".

[Claudius]

Why is the arabic keyboard layout that you supplied missing the numbers?

[Stskeeps]

Originally Posted by Claudius

Why is the arabic keyboard layout that you supplied missing the numbers?

They're in shift, it seems like, see:
<layout mode_b="1">

[qole]

How interchangeable is this with the matchbox-keyboard layouts? The XML looks very similar.

[thp]

German (de) Keyboard Layout for him-arabic/Mer
License: GPLv2 or later; by Thomas Perl
Comments: Based on the "en" example and the Maemo 4 on-screen keyboard for "de"

[meizirkki]

Finnish layout.
(C) 2009 Roope Kuisma
GPLv2 or later
4 row keyboard based on the arabic plugin and the keyboard lying on my desk.

1st row:
(normal) q w e r t y u i o p å ?
(shifted) Q W E R T Y U I O P Å !

2nd row
(normal) a s d f g h j k l ö ä '
(shifted) A S D F G H J K L Ö Ä ~

3rd row
(normal) z x c v b n m , . - / \
(shifted) Z X C V B N M ; : _ ( )

4th row:
(normal) space
(shifted) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 space

Would this layout be okay for Swedish / Norwegian ppl too?

If you have suggestions let me know.

[fredoll]

French (fr) Keyboard Layout for him-arabic/Mer
License: GPLv2 or later; by Fred Lefévère-Laoide
Comments: A french layout based on thp's file and my laptop keyboard

[fpp]

I'll try to make one based on my French N10 ASAP - not too much free time ATM unfortunately.

[Bobbe]

Just checking, we're supposed to use HTML codes for accents right?

If so, can we use both html entities and Ascii?