FSO and keyboard plugins?

[Al Johnson]

On Tuesday 09 September 2008, Visti Andresen wrote:
> What I would like to propose is, that the FSO keyboard system should
> be(is?) modular.
>
> Why?
> It should be possible to have many different input methods that
> coexists, as different use cases may favour different keyboards.
> (Unlike the 2007.2 matchbox keyboard that assumes that it is the only
> keyboard app (it can be killed to allow the usage of an alternate
> keyboard)) How? When tapping and holding the keyboard widget it could
> display a list of available keyboards. The list could be generated by
> scanning a folder for ".exe" or ".so" files (/usr/bin/keyboards ?). I
> would prefer executables as they give more freedom regarding
> toolkits/languages. The widget could just fork a new process that runs
> the keyboard application, and kill it when it wants to close it. (Note:
> a .so interface could help by providing the input area, but would put
> restraints on the implementation. A tutorial would provide almost the
> same level of help but won't force you to open the input area in that
> particular way)
>
> I haven't dug deep into the inner working of the FSO keyboard system,
> so this may already be implemented. (Haven't touched my pen/stroke
> recognition keyboard after discovering that it only worked under
> 2007.2, kind of depressing that the hardest part was creating the input
> area, and now it was broken again...)
>
> In case you were wondering my keyboard is registered on the Openmoko
> project site (look for the "strokerecog" project)

Check the archive for Raster's posts on how keyboards work in Illume. IIRC 
most of what you are suggesting is already possible with Illume although 
there isn't yet a clean GUI to configure it. If your keyboard worked under 
2007.2 (Matchbox) I think it should be usable with Illume too.