Just finished hacking up a multi-tap virtual keyboard for OpenMoko, using libfakekey, the excellent multi-tap input method in GTK 2.12 (by Openisumus guys) and ripping bits from matchbox-keyboard where necessary. Just shy of a couple of day's work to get the basic thing working and on the phone:
This is the first run of course, it probably takes up a little too much room like that, could look nicer/be clearer, etc., but plenty of time to improve on that. Finally you can use the moko phone completely without a stylus :)
Owen Taylor says:
Just a random UI thought: what if you did it pie menu style ... tapping with your finger showed popups [A] on the left [B] on the top and [C] on the right, and dragging your finger in any direction by the smallest amount selected that letter. (Maybe even preprime by where on the key you pressed.) Obviously there are many people highly trained on multi-touch, but it seems a far from ideal way of dealing with the "blunt instrument" typing on a continuous input touchscreen.
Ross says:
Owen: the problem with your plan is that with a large enough blunt instrument (say a finger) even small rolls can be perceived as drags on high resolution screens. Matchbox Keyboard used to have "gesture" support where you could drag on a key to perform backspace, newline, etc, but everyone just thought that it was broken because nobody knew they were dragging...
Would be an interesting research project, but I'd expect you'd need to spend a lot of time tuning it.
Steph Meslin-Weber says:
Great input ideas all round, but we should bear in mind that at a minimum we need to have standard input methods that every expects. This means multitap and some type of dictionary-based predictive entry (T9-like).
Multitap is now such a de-facto standard that we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if it wasn't present.
Joshua Layne says:
I asked Thomas about this on one of the openmoko lists about a week ago, but is there any chance of sharing the keypad with the dialer? It seems silly to have two numeric keypad keyboards and presents an inconsistent UI to the end user. I know the dialer is designed to take up as much screen real estate as possible to maximize the size of the buttons and that this interface would need to allow space for texting or emailing, but it seems like some compromise could be reached.
I absolutely agree with the points about needing predictive text based on num keypad entry - we won't ever get any mainstream users without it.
Chris Lord says:
Unfortunately, T9 is patent-encumbered, so that makes it a no-go area :/ I planned on adding word prediction to this by integrating minipredict ( http://www.handhelds.org/~paxanima/ ), but this will only really help with long words, and how easy it'll be to integrate, I don't know...
All the same, basic multi-tap input is still a whole lot better than a QWERTY keyboard - Given how passionately people seem to feel about this (myself included), I'd have expected there to be more prototypes/mock-ups around...
adam says:
For matchbox-keyboard what about "keypress on release" for qwerty?
Have a dbus daemon (might want to reuse it for other events) that displays a libosd giant translucent letter in the center of the screen when the key is pressed down and then change the letter as your finger moves around the keyboard. Only send the key that the finger is over when the finger is lifted from the display.
?
Pat says:
Just a future user monitoring the main OpenMoko feed, and quickly chiming in...
A landscape QWERTY keyboard is very, very important to me. I understand how important multi-tap is, but please don't disregard a landscape QWERTY keyboard. Give users a choice. :)
Chris Lord says:
I think anyone contemplating a QWERTY keyboard on the moko phone, landscape or otherwise, hasn't actually seen the size of the screen :) Or perhaps they have really tiny, pointed fingers... Still, not hard to add a switch between the two, for anyone that wants to do that.
skerit says:
T9 is pattented? Blast them, that's evil!
Anyhow, not the right time, not the right place ...
Shouldn't it just be possible to configure the keyboard? Choose what you want? Landscape - multi-tap? For example, someone who has to push the "1" button to get a space would probably like to do so on his new, free-phone, in stead of being forced to change his habbit again
It's a small, stupid problem, but still!
mike says:
@skerit: Ohh, yes, you're right.
I hadn't thought about that, when looking at the screenshot.
But now, that you said it, I remember how hard it gets, when I have to type texts on a Nokia, when being familiar to a SonyEricsson phone ;)
So probably some layouts would be nice!
Any comments?
