Feature Request: better Keyboard access?

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Feature Request: better Keyboard access?

Midimaster(Posted 2013) [#1]
More and more monkey coder use the virtual keyboards offered by the mobile OSs. But do you US americans know, that the monkey access to this does not reach the OS's methods to enter any character bejond the basic ASCII set?

In europe we have a lot of characters we only can enter when pressing a basic button for a second, than the OS opens a selection of additional character, where I can select my f.e. german "umlauts" like <ä> <ö> or <ü>.

This is very important for f.e. enter player's name outside english spoken countries. Or when your game offers the possibility to enter a message to a gam partner. etc...

Is there a chance to change this behavior to a more professional solution?


impixi(Posted 2013) [#2]
Doesn't the EnableKeyboard command activate the "native" virtual keyboard for iOS and Android platforms? And doesn't this keyboard adapt itself depending on the region the user's device is configured? If not, that's a problem, I think...


Midimaster(Posted 2013) [#3]
No, the virtual keyboards never have the amount of keys like regular keyboards.

If you google an image of such a virtual keyboard you will see, that the first row only offers 10 basic key "QWERTZUIOP" in the first row and only 9 keys "ASDFGHJKL" in the second.

A real keyboard offers 12 keys. The special character keys are on the right side:
"QWERTZUIOPÜ*"
"ASDFGHJKLÖÄ'"

The method to reach german umlauts on smartphones is to press the <A> and wait 1 second. Then a popup offers 6-8 variants of <A> for various languages. You now can remove the finger and press again to select one of these keys. I think you can do this also on a US smartphone....

All "real" Android apps recognize this precedure and wait for the "final" keypress. Monkey does not.


Nobuyuki(Posted 2013) [#4]
Try running through all scancodes through $10000 in a loop when you're receiving virtual keyboard input. You may find that Monkey can already catch some of these, but there just isn't a constant defined for it. (it's also possible that you'll find nothing!)


rIKmAN(Posted 2013) [#5]
It doesn't fix your umlaut problem, but you can change the type of keyboard that appears on iOS: http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/Community/posts.php?topic=1569#14476