Notices

This is simultaneously what I love and hate about the n900. I love the fact that we can have awesome projects like this. I hate the fact that we need awesome projects like this to fix what is an incomplete product that will never be finished.

+1 for qwerty and those little popups to let you know what key you are on like apple/google/opera.

This will be the single most important usability update for the n900 since it's release.

If you want to switch back to the default virtual keyboard without uninstalling the app you can simply run this command in X-terminal


What is the name of this keyboard? So that the same command can set the portrait keyboard as default one??

Thanks

Also seen on BlueMaemo, which borrowed it keyboard from some EFL POC keyboard -- don't remember the original project's name.

guys i installed it but it doesn t work . . how can i make it work?

andrew_85 - did you either reboot the device or open x-term, type "killall hildon-input-method", and press enter? (It won't say anything when you run the command, it'll just go to the next line, but it will have done what it needed to do)

If not, that's probably where your problem is. In which case checking the very first post of and/or rereading this thread would have answered your question.

If you did do that, and it still doesn't work, please go into more detail as to what you're doing, what you have installed, etc, so that others can help you.

This is the code to switch between keyboards

Default keyboard is called : hildon_western_fkb
Portrait keyboard is called : hildon_im_onehand_fkb

Just simple enter these commands in the order I list them in :

To enable portait keyboard:

Then if you want to revert to the default landscape QWERTY keyboard:

Hope this helps people wanting to switch ebtween them easily

Maybe somebody can make a script so we can simply execute the commands easily! Or a control panel applet? Last exam tommorow and I am gonna try and get in on the developing side to try and help Maybe I will make a toggle switch in the settings as a seperate applet if nobody does it before I get a chance to

Just tried your commands. They do indeedly work. However, something I noticed: I went into X-Term, typed the code to enable the default vkb, ran it, ran killall hildon-input-method, closed the hardware keyboard, and pressed on the screen. Normal keyboard came up fine. Then I hid the keyboard by clicking outside it, opened up the hardware one, and did the code to enable the new portrait compatible one. Upon hitting enter for "killall hildon-input-method", X-Term crashed, saying "Internal Error. Application 'T-Term closed." I reopened X-Term, closed HWK, and pressed the screen, and the new VKB came up - SO, the commands worked perfectly, but I'm wondering if anyone knows why it behaved like that.

Just tried doing ONLY the code to switch to standard keyboard. X-Term crashed at entering "killall hildon-input-method" again. (But it did revert to the virtual keyboard again).

And just tried again with only the code to go back to this portrait compatible one. Same error again. (Keyboard went to the new one just fine.)

And tried "killall hildon-input-method" by itself. X-Term crashed again.

It's not horribly bad, and everything seems to still work, but it's annoying.

(Before hitting submit I rebooted N900 and tested again - no change. X-Term crashed upon "killall hildon-input-method".)

I definitely agree that a good qwerty keyboard would be better, even the opera implementation is better than nothing.

For what it's worth the main thing I hate about the Opera vertical keyboard is the iPhone-esque capitalization scheme - it's just a caps lock, not a cell-phone-like shift key (hence my recommendation to go with the latter for this virtual keyboard). I don't even mind having to click three times to get to certain characters, though that bothers me ever-so-slightly too. (This entire post is referring to Opera's keyboard only, obviously. Clicking three times to get to a letter on the vertical keyboard here doesn't bother me because I know it's a work in progress.)

While you guys are at it, what about adding a cool feature that shaking the n900 for 2 seconds will erase all text?