Illume keyboard Disappeared

[Joel Newkirk]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:28:55 +1000, Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)
<raster at openmoko.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:00:08 -0400 Alex Fitzpatrick

> as best i know there is no way to turn qpe's keyboard off. until that
> happens
> there will always be fighting between illume's own keyboard and qpe's (As
> the
> vkbd system is generic allowing for any keyboard window - and illume just
> creates one of its own that gets picked up by the generic system).
> 
> --
> Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster at openmoko.org>

Right now, that's an IMMENSE irritation for me. (and to judge by
mailinglist traffic, for many many others as well) I had xterm running
today, typing on the 'full qwerty' keyboard, and while I was staring at the
screen that keyboard went away and the 'letters only' one appeared, and the
only way I could get cursor keys back was to reboot the goddammed thing.

I dare anyone to try editing a file with that useless excuse for a
keyboard.  It may be good for text messaging and naming entries in
Contacts, but even there it has shortcomings, mostly caused by the
dictionary interaction.  

The predictive error introduction and the need to switch keyboards for
punctuation and numbers means it takes a painfully long time to type
something like 'ip r d default via 192.168.0.201'.  If the damned thing
would just stay shut off when disabled it'd be acceptable.

I've been seriously considering flashing to a different OS just because of
the keyboard.  Any OS that intermittently removes cursor keys requiring
reboot to restore them is broken. 

j

PS - I realize this and similar posts are mostly 'preaching to the choir'. 
Since a polling mechanism isn't readily available, would it be useful to
start a 'qtopia keyboard vote' thread where people can be encouraged to
post a simple 'make it die' or 'I love it' or whatever as a vote?  Clearly
someone controlling such decisions at Openmoko is insufficiently aware of
the general loathing within the community toward that keyboard.