[Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

This is an experiment in trying to source the Talk community in order to help you get your country's keyboard layouts into our on screen keyboard in Mer.

Basically, we've found that him-arabic (the input method for arabic) is actually a keyboard layout engine (it reads from XML), and we would like to ask -you- to help contribute keyboard layouts so we can have full support for your preferred layouts.

The layouts are XML files (UTF-8) and very simple. An example of Arabic can be seen here with the graphical version seen here. The example of english layout can be found here

Basic structure:

* <him-arabic>
** <layout mode="0"> (0 meaning shift not pressed, 1 means shift pressed)
*** <row> repeat these elements per row you want
**** <key name="character" expand="1 if it should expand and fill - look at the space button in the image, 0 otherwise" />
**** Add as many keys as needed in the row
*** </row>
** <layout>
** Make both a shift not pressed and shift pressed layout.
* </him-arabic>

We currently have:

Arabic
English
Hebrew
German (by thp)
Finnish/Swedish/Norwegian (by Meizirkki)
Russian (by 412b)
French (by fredoll)
Portuguese-speaking countries (Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, etc.) (by Bobbe)
Italian (by debernardis)
Persian/Farsi (by Claudius)


- will update list as new layouts come in.

When posting please do it in the following manner:

* Attach the .xml file to the post
* Acknowledge that the layout is licensed GPLv2 or later, and write what name you would like to be acknowledged with in AUTHORS
* Indicate which keyboard layout it is
* Any comments related to the layout.

If anyone wants to help extend him-arabic (it's c++) to make it a more generic keyboard engine, come talk to us in #mer on irc.freenode.net

Thanks in advance!

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Some notes:
* Number of rows is not fixed at four. It can be less, or more, and the keys will be resized accordingly.
* Current layout is a bit different - there is no "special keys" key, it is replaced by "shift-lock".

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Why is the arabic keyboard layout that you supplied missing the numbers?

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

They're in shift, it seems like, see:
<layout mode_b="1">

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

How interchangeable is this with the matchbox-keyboard layouts? The XML looks very similar.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

German (de) Keyboard Layout for him-arabic/Mer
License: GPLv2 or later; by Thomas Perl
Comments: Based on the "en" example and the Maemo 4 on-screen keyboard for "de"

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Finnish layout.
(C) 2009 Roope Kuisma
GPLv2 or later
4 row keyboard based on the arabic plugin and the keyboard lying on my desk.

Would this layout be okay for Swedish / Norwegian ppl too?

If you have suggestions let me know.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

French (fr) Keyboard Layout for him-arabic/Mer
License: GPLv2 or later; by Fred Lefévère-Laoide
Comments: A french layout based on thp's file and my laptop keyboard

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

I'll try to make one based on my French N10 ASAP - not too much free time ATM unfortunately.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Just checking, we're supposed to use HTML codes for accents right?

If so, can we use both html entities and Ascii?

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Good question really - it's UTF-8 but you need to use &amp; for ampersand cos of the syntax..

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Russian Keyboard Layout for him-arabic/Mer
Kirill Plyashkevich
License: GPLv2 or later

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Portuguese-BR
Bobbe
GPLv2 or later

(I changed the language tab <him-arabic>, to <him-portuguese-br>. Dunno if I should have done that)

This should work for all Portuguese-speaking countries (Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, etc.)

Based on the keyboard sitting right in front of me an the English HIM layout, with slight changes. (The Portuguese layout on my N800 has an umlaut in the main rows of keys, a symbol we don't have in Portuguese, but do have in Portuguese Keyboards. It's there as well, but as shift-6, as it is usually found here).

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

If people want to test their keyboards, here is what I did to get Finnish keyboard to work (after him-arabic installed):


cp fi.xml.txt /usr/share/him-arabic/fi.xml
him-arabic-register fi_FI
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/osso/inputmethod/hildon-im-languages/fi_FI/word-completion false
gconftool-2 -s -t string /apps/osso/inputmethod/hildon-im-languages/language-1 fi_FI
gconftool-2 -s -t int /apps/osso/inputmethod/hildon-im-languages/current 1


Then select keyboard(arabic) in keyboard menu and fi_FI in language menu. The key under TAB switches between fi and en keyboards.

Note that you can test it in maemo as well, not only Mer.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

I've got a small question. What's about adding some extra keys to layout? E.g. my locale layout (on real keyboards) have no ~`<>|$@#^&[]{} symbols.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

See the attached en.xml for example. On SmartQ5 I used it a little with a finger, and it works very well, even though the keys are small.
In general, you can put as many keys in a row as you like.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

If it is for me, then I didn't figure out the question right. I was talking about custom modifications for layout (adding those symbols) in a situation, when on original locale keyboard layout they don't exist.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Looking at the keyboard of my Compaq nc4200 I made an Italian layout which sports practically all the useful keys, also those in third function (Alt Gr).

EDIT: I've changed the disposition in one that might be more comfortable.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

fred, your file has two "quote" key lines in the first row :
<key name="'" expand="0" />
<key name="'" expand="0" />

stkeeps : is there no way to declare the extra characters on some keys (AltGr) ?

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

@english and german layout: Just wondering why you are starting the numbering row with "0" and not ordering like a regular keyboard from 1 up to 9 and then the 0.

Please find attached the persian keyboard layout released under GPLv2 or later.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Maybe if we hack the code a bit.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Problems:

Italian: don't use &Egrave;, use the &#200 ; (or the UTF-8 character).

French: You used ISO8859, instead of UTF-8.

Farsi: Used < & instead of &lt; &amp;

Portuguese: I did not find the problem yet, but the file does not parse. Can you replace most of the xml entities with UTF-8 characters?

If someone wants to try, package is at:
http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/him...mer1_armel.deb
http://my.arava.co.il/~matan/770/him...-6mer1.diff.gz


To use:

* Install package.
* Reboot (maybe something else should work?).
* select language with command

gconftool-2 --type string -s /apps/osso/inputmethod/hildon-im-languages/language-1 fa_IR

* select Keyboard (arabic) from Keyboard menu, and then second language in Language menu.
* EN (key below Tab) switches between English keyboard and currently selected language keyboard.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Thanks Matan !
New try : should be UTF-8 this time

French (fr) Keyboard Layout for him-arabic/Mer
License: GPLv2 or later; by Fred Lefévère-Laoide
Comments: A french layout based on thp's file and my laptop keyboard

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

OK I did the change.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Before I run all the edits again, do you think it might be due to the fact that I'm editing it in Windows? Is there a text-editor in Windows you'd recommend? Notepad doesn't recognize line breaks but Wordpad does, thought it would be OK, but it might be causing the problem.

My 3g modem doesn't work in Linux (in short, ZTE is a ***** :mad: )

Is there anyway to circumvent this? I could go to my Ubuntu install and edit it from there, but I'd have to bounce back and forth every time just to upload the file. Would appreciate if there was an easier solution(?)

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Is your 3g modem USB? If so you could somehow install Windows under Virtualbox, then install your 3g modem in Windows (Virtualbox supports USB-access to guest OS) and then set the virtual network (between Windows and Ubuntu) so that the Guest OS shares the 3g internet access with the Host OS ;)

http://www.virtualbox.org/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

PSPad (has nothing to do with a sony psp ;))

Like it. Like it a lot.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Greek (el_GR) layout, public domain.

Re: [Mer] Crowdsourcing for on screen keyboard layouts
 

Send a fixed german keyboard layout.
the one attached didn't work for me.

There seems something to be wrong wit the german umlaute, like ä,ö,ß and so on.

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