Is there some way to turn the predictive dictionary off?

[Ken Restivo]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 10:41:11AM +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> 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
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
								  that would be me.
								  
And, probably, I'd guess a lot of people who would shell out twice the price of an iPhone, just because it runs Linux, would also be very, very likely to be a terminal junkie.
								  
> 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).

Sounds great.

> 
> 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.

Very nice feature! Would help a lot, kind of like bash completion. Keystrokes on a touchscreen could really benefit from this.

> 
> 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.
>

Auuughhh!!! OK, my phone is once again a brick.

It's funny how it goes from being a great device to being more or less useless at least once every two days... this is normal for a product under heavy development. But it is also frustrating.

The hard-coded QPE keyboard that has replaced Illume has no control key. No ALT key. No up or down arrows either. And the keyboard layout is hard-coded, which seems fatally limiting. How will users who don't speak English use it if there are no .kbd files?

The text-editable .kbd files approach was a *great* idea. As was the "qwerty" button (which I was able to bring back thanks to someone posting a file with it), and the pop-up for picking different keyboard types, etc... all stuff that delighted this user.... and has been summarily removed.

What packages do I need to hack, and how, to bring the Illume keyboard-- the one with the configurable .kbd files-- back again? Or, is the QPE keyboard going to get this text-editable keyboard layout functionality soon (and, how soon)?


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

Actually I got that to work. If I don't let the prediction even get started, and hold down the zoom key from the *first* letter, then the prediction doesn't even start up. But once I let it get started, it doesn't seem to want to stop, even if I hold the zoom down.

-ken