Skinnable virtual keyboard and maybe predictive input (1 Viewer)

[Smirnuff]

The code to do ordinary SMS input is already in place but thanks for the pointer.

T9 could be an issue, had a brief look at their site last night. Guess I should fire off an e-mail to them to make sure that we don't run into any problems. Even if there is a problem, we should be able to work around it by changing functionality slightly, i.e. from predictive to more of an auto-complete or something along those lines.

 

[Smirnuff]

Hi -

I'm turning my attention to the virtual keyboard again now that My Tetris is finished.

I'd like to have some input on how people would like this to work. It's already been suggested that the keyboard should be switchable from ABC to QWERTY layouts.

Based on the screenshots above, I think that the lower left dummy buttons should be interchangeable with a single button covering the same space, in which we could add context specific stuff such as Agree's mods to improve searching of music etc.

The keyboard already supports SMS style input. I looked into the whole predicitive thing and there are open source dictionaries available to make this easier. There's still quite a bit of thinking left to be done regarding this, and I think it should be more of an auto complete rather than predictive to avoid any issues with T9 (who couldn't be bothered to respond to my mails).

Samsonite has kindly sent me some of his ideas regarding the keyboard and has included an 'accents' button. Being British this is something I hadn't even thought about so, are there any other things like this that should be considered?

Any mock-ups of how you'd like to see this looking would be awesome too.

Cheers,
Lee.

 

[Scope]

Another even smaller layout on the Virtual keyboard. What is the purpose of just using 1/4th of the screen? Larger buttons, larger text. If the input row is too small for larger text, make two rows. Everyone doesnt have 42" plasma Oh yeah and about the autocomplete stuff. I dunno if there are any free dictionaries out there with some special format that would fit as an import. However that would be awesome considering people writing on msn in their own language so they can import a dictionary with their own language and switch it in virtual keyboard, say Swedish/English And the autocomplete should remember the most used words and suggest them first (obviously), and add new words typed.
This would be awesome, keep up the good work

 

[Anonymous]

hi,

I would prefer a smaller keyboard as well...
In addition I was thinking of a "clear" button to clear the whole input at once - if it is possible?!

keans

 

[Ricardoduarte]

Please, can someone tell me: can i use the "virtual Keyboard" in all places ? with a keyb. shortcut? like in Firefox, etc?

 

[Smirnuff]

Once the keyboard is written, sizing will simply be a skinning issue. So eventually we'll be able to have big ones and small ones. I'm leaning more towards Frodo's thinking with the MSN plugin at the moment, with auto complete there really isn't a need for either an ABC or QWERTY layout BUT we should still offer full support for these.

Regarding auto complete, I've written an app this afternoon using a 137k word dictionary. The dictionary starts of as a plain text file, one word per line and is read into the dictionary builder a word at a time, that word is translated into the corresponding key presses (e.g. 533 for Lee). Once we know the digits we add the word to a hashtable, once the whole dictionary is built the value for entry 533 would look like:

532: lea|kea
533: led|Lee|Jed|ked|kef
534: ...

A couple of words there that I wasn't aware of prior to doing this! My mobile offers Led, Lee, Kee, Lef, Jef and Jee as possible words for 533. It's a garbage in, garbage out situation when it comes to the source dictionary. The hashtable is then serialized once the entire dictionary has been parsed.

There are good open source dictionaries out there and hopefully we can cover all the languages already supported too.

Next job on the auto complete is to store the data in something more memory friendly than a Hashtable (my test app runs at 53mb even though it has two labels on a form). SQLite may be the best bet, our own B-Tree implementation or whatever... back to the getting it skinnable first.

Ricardoduarte: I don't believe that there is a shortcut key, you can however use the keyboard anywhere within MP that using a keyboard is applicable.

Lee.

 

[Smirnuff]

Was able to find a bit of free time Friday and this evening so decided to continue work on the virtual keyboard. A beta of the keyboard can be had from here. If you download, install into your MP folder and start MP, you should find a new plugin called My Example. Clicking the 'Click me...' button presents the keyboard.

Currently supports:

SMS style entry.
Use of rewind and fast forward buttons to move around the text, in addition to the onscreen cursors.
Pressing '#' toggles the shift button.

Todo:

Enable the predictive text (works really well but needs work before it can be considered a beta).
Create alternative layouts for Qwerty entry and SMS.
Source enough usable (i.e. friendly format, open source etc) dictionaries to cover MP's currently supported languages.
Add another button (or more than one) that would allow plugins the option of displaying addition things, such as Agree's mods for the search keyboard.

This is a beta release, it doesn't replace the existing instances of the virtual keyboard and is bound to contain some bugs. That said, I'd appreciate a few downloads and some feedback on how it works for y'all. It also needs further graphics that either myself or Samsonite (about time he did some work around here ) will provide.

This is what it currently looks like:

 

[Mr.Mitchell]

Would love to try it, but the link doesn't work for me.

 

[Smirnuff]

Oooops! Should work okay now...

 

[mPod]

Very good work, Smirnoff!!! Just tested it and was impressed! :lol: