Virtual QWERTY Keyboards to be used with Fingers...

Thomas Gstädtner thomas at gstaedtner.net
Fri Feb 29 11:26:50 CET 2008


At moment it's only square - with the reason to need as less space as
possible (like you can see it needs about the same amount of space on the
screen as the matchbox-keyboard but way more efficient).
As I use the efl and especially Edje as layout engine, it's no problem at
all to just make a circular theme! Also there currently is only the
alphabetic (yet not complete) layout that is easy to understand (without
learning), but pretty unefficient. In future this all will be fully
flexible. The themers can decide what form they'd like to have, it's easy to
try different ways to find the best, and it also should be easy to find fast
and efficient key layouts.
At least that's what planned. Needs some time (I'm a newbie), but is no real
problem.
The only fix thing is the 12-button design, but as long this is implemented
in the theme somehow everything is possible.
A problem migt be matchbox, I just don't know how flexible the docks are and
what is possible with them. I don't like wasting that much screen for a bit
more comfort, but let's see.

On 2/29/08, enaut <enaut.w at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Thomas Gstädtner schrieb:
>
> > I don't think qwerty is what we want really.
> > Also that it requires only one keypress per letter is not fully true,
> > as you have to use "shift" very often (capitals, special charakters,
> ...).
> > Imho the display on the neo is way to small to have qwerty. The iphone
> > shows, that eben the much bigger screen (without a high bezel!) is not
> > really great for a extremely basic qwerty variant.
> > I'm currently working on another system that requires one drag per
> > sign (no matter what sign, be it capitals, special chars, ...) and can
> > be extremely easy and fast with a proper layout.
> > You can see a basic preview here:
> > http://videos.gstaedtner.net/enter_neo_native.mkv
> > I'm a total newbie in programming, but I expect some results in the
> > next time.
> > The system allows 144 key-combinations with buttons big enough to
> > easily hit them with your thumbs.
> > It allows fast one-handed writing of all ascii-signs and it will be
> > very flexible with the layouts.
> > So it would be possible to have a layout that allows single-click
> > without dragging for keys needed often in a row (backspace/del e.g.),
> > as you can see with the "o" on the video. I'm writing "HelloWorld"
> > there (you can see the output on the terminal, as there is only a
> > stdout-function at moment), the "Hello" to show the interface, the
> > "World" to show the speed (that will improve quite a bit so that the
> > interface will be fast enough to follow you :) ).
> > Of course in the end it will be on the bottom of the screen as the old
> > matchbox-keyboard is (at moment I'm working on the matchbox
> > integration), so you can hold it in your right hand and type with your
> > right thumb without needing the left hand at all.
> > It doesn't even need prediction to be fast and easy, although it would
> > be a possibility to enhance it.
> > There's a tarball with the source, but not ready to be usable, so I
> > will release the code later.
> > Interested people can have the link and maybe an ipkg, but I'd
> > recommend at least to wait until the matchbox-integration is ready.
>
> I like this Idea.
> Did you try to implement this in a circular fashion? that would look
> better and it may even be easy to use with one hand. With your square
> layout you often have prety long distances to drag. Moving my thumb over
> a display i feel only for a pretty small area comfortable the rest ist
> really hard to reach in an acurate way so that I actually hit the button
> i want to.
>
>
> enaut
>
>
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