Is there some way to turn the predictive dictionary off?

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:58:15 -0700 Ken Restivo <ken at restivo.org> babbled:
 
> I really liked that Illume keyboard :-( It was perfect.

sorry - i will work on it. i will add a way to turn it on again later... but
for now its disabled. i will also bring back dictionary matching (in illume's
kbd the layout controls if the dictionary is used, so full-qwerty was set up so
the dictionary/buffer is always bypassed and keystrokes go directly in. the
idea is that full-qwerty is for terminal junkies or those with a stylus and who
can tap accurately. the alpha keys are for just writing normal text - like
email, sms, etc. and thus will use a dictionary to help correct your
mis-typings, as it's assumed you may be in a hurry and using your fingers, not a
stylus (and thus make mistakes). the numeric layout is to complement the alpha
one to add other numbers and symbols you want day to day for writing text - but
in general you need it much less than a-z. i also want to have people be able
to install and use layouts for specific languages - eg german, french, russian,
greek etc. - and these keyboards should be easy to create .kbd layout files
for. what is missing is an actual dictionary backing the dictionary lookup
buffer (used to have one - a very small 5000 word dictionary, but gone -
for now), and the ability to select which dictionary to use (as i have read here
- people seem to want to be able to select language for dictionary and layouts -
often separately).

now here is the cool bit.. with the right layout file (one just like full
qwerty) it'd be perfectly possible to have a "terminal commands" dictionary
that has all the common unix commands AND their command-line options in it and
then change the full-qwerty to be a terminal.kbd -allow dictionary matching for
keystrokes needed (a-z, -, _ 0-9), and then i guess i need a way for a kbd file
to indicate a required (or preferred) dictionary too. but the cool it is.. this
is only a few steps away code-wise. very few. this should make all the terminal
junkies most happy, give input for regular english (or german, french etc.),
and still maintain a small footprint.

it's a nice stop along the train ride to have all this - and something ihave
kind of planned along the way to try and meet the needs of people here - at
least as i see them expressed on the list (wanting to type regular text,
wanting to use the terminal, wanting to be able to pop the keyboard up and done
as you the user wants, not the application thinks it wants. etc.)

one FIXME i have in the code is auto-detecting a "real keyboard" (usb
or bluetooth). if you plug in or use a REAL keyboard you'd like the virtual one
to just slide away and hide while this is the case (or course begin able to
manually bring it up if wanted). right now i don't know a CLEAN way to
auto-detect this. (and by CLEAN i mean a way that would work not just on the
freerunner, but on a desktop as well, and any other device that is similar - so
in future as we produce new and interesting devices - the exact same code just
keeps working without specific changes per device)...

unfortunately for me - this is a lower priority thing as well. i have no usb
keyboard that plugs in and works with my FR, no a bluetooth one... if i get
around to having these 2 - i'd definitely look into it. in the meantime...
anyone who wants to find a nice clean way to detect this... it'd make this
happen sooner... :)

> I didn't know that it went away.
> 
> So where do I edit the keymaps for the new-default, QPE keyboard, so that I
> can create a full-QWERTY layout just like the Illume one?

qtopia's keyboard layout is hard-coded into the keyboard. no files to go edit.

> Also, bringing up the "zoom" doesn't make the dictionary go away. It's still
> changing my "ls" to "is".

:(

-- 
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster at openmoko.org>