On Screen Keyboard

On Screen Keyboard: A path forward

The Palm Pre already COMES with an on-screen keyboard. It works in portrait and landscape, in all apps, in all fields.

Press the "sym" key and a scrollable 5x5 keyboard pops up full of alternate characters.

This is controlled by /usr/palm/frameworks/mojo/submissions/191.15/javascripts/widget_charselector.js

with the layout controlled by 3 files in /usr/palm/frameworks/mojo/submissions/191.15/templates/charselector

the actual list of characters that appear on the screen is controlled by /usr/palm/frameworks/mojo/submissions/191.15/resources/en_us/alternatechars_table.json

At the simplest level then, creating an on-screen keyboard requires editing the alternate characters table json, to add the "regular" charcters to it, and then when you want a keyboard, press SYM and poof, a keyboard.

At the next level, widget_charselector.js needs to be modified to not close the keyboard after each keypress.

A more sophisticated version would require editing widget_charselector.js to make the widget wider to accomodate more characters at a time, or perhaps a qwerty layout.

A further refinement would require digging into the mojo framework deeper. It would be really "neat" if you were in a text field and the keyboard "popped up" if the slider was closed. This would be "harder."

Still, this is a path forward which is something we haven't had before.

Please edit this page with your thoughts, and proposals.

Update: 8/04/09 I have been editing widget_charselector.js, and no changes have occurred, it does not control sym in the least bit -Joesmith