Maliit, Plasma Active and Mer

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Sunday, May 27, 2012 20:17:01 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Saturday, May 26, 2012 15:03:11 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > I finally had my first chance to see Maliit Active live in action (on
> > Mer),
> > and it generally I like it a lot!
> 
> huzzah!
> 
> > Even though the keys are currently way too small on the Mer x86 image on a
> > Wetab (partly because they are not dpi-aware yet, partly because the
> 
> yes, size is the next thing we need to tackle in the integration ...
> 
> > However since many keys that are often needed in a terminal (like tab and
> > arrow keys) are rarely needed in usual mobile usecases, we shouldn't
> > clutter the normal layouts with them. What I think does make sense,
> > though, is having a third (or rather fifth) layout specific for terminal
> > use which includes all keys regularly needed there (letters, /, ., |,
> > <,>, ~, -, arrow keys and maybe a few more). If that's soo many keys, it
> > may contain only tab and arrow keys so the user can at least switch to it
> > when needed. Can we do that for PA or does it have to be implemented in
> > Maliit?
> we can do it in the PA integration for Maliit. and i agree that "geek
> characters" are necessary in our keyboard. / is needed for urls, so that
> should readily available .. the rest should be easily found. having a tab
> key on the main layout wouldn't be the worst idea, though, as it could also
> help encourage the use of tabbing between text fields on forms.

Actually, we can do "stuff like this" in the app. The mechanism works like 
this, roughly:

- A widget can have input method hints attached to it, which say things like 
  "this is a URL input", "only numbers are accepted", etc (*1)
- An app can set input method hints on a certain widget
- maliit reads these input method hints from the currently focused widget, and 
  changes the keyboard layout accordingly

(*1) http://doc.qt.nokia.com/qt-maemo/qt.html#InputMethodHint-enum

I don't see hints suitable for "enable tab key", and maybe we'll find 
ourselves missing more types of hints (arrow keys, for example). But as Aaron 
said, I think a tab key makes sense anyway.

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9