Terminal for ASU

[Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman)]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:18:50 +0200 Sven Klomp <sven at klomp.de> babbled:

> On Monday 21 July 2008 05:30:09 Ken Restivo wrote:
> > On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 08:20:46PM -0700, Brian C wrote:
> > > Ken Restivo wrote:
> > > 1. It's an open platform, so it's inevitable that it will have a
> > > terminal.
> > >
> > > 2. If it were not possible to have a terminal on ASU, then OpenMoko
> > > should just abandon ASU immediately.
> > >
> > > Therefore, you should feel free to open the bug.
> >
> > I'll wait to see if anyone responds with "Sure, it has one, or you can use
> > any terminal with it, here's how you get it to work, get it into the
> > menu/icon/illume thing, make it use the keyboard, blah blah blah".
> 
> Hm, I'm using the openmoko-terminal2 without problems on ASU. The tricky part 
> was to use the Illume keyboard with GTK applications. At freeyourphone.de was 
> a hint that you have to install ONLY  matchbox-keyboard-im (see 
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Complete_QWERTY_Keyboard_On_The_Freerunner) and 
> GTK applications will start Illume keyboard. I know, it is strange. However 
> it worked :-)

the problem is the designers decided that ASU is not to have any manual
keyboard toggle button because it will disturb the design and/or confuse users,
so all apps and toolkits need modification to talk a "protocol" to bring up the
keyboard on demand (no manual controls). that is why you need to do this.
personally i think you need a manual control because, as such, many apps and
toolkits will not be changed, or they will get it wrong and give you a keyboard
when you don't want one, or decide not to give you one when you do... but
that's not my call.

but you will ned the matchbox- or multitap im module to send these messages.
qtopia-x11 has been patched todo this too. the illume keyboard also understands
a newer and much more reliable method of auto-requesting a virtual keyboard
(properties on your window), and i think holger has added support in qtopia-x11
for that now, but it also understands the older MB and multi-tap protocol... if
people want other protocols supported...let me know the details.

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