[Vm-dev] Got soft keyboard working to some degree on Android

[David T. Lewis]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 11:46:55PM -0500, Dimitry Golubovsky wrote:
>  
> Hi,
> 
> I got the soft keyboard working with Squeak on a Pandigital Novel 9"
> tablet (Android 2.0).

Great, it's nice to see some progress on the Android VM!

Dave


> I had to add call to view.setFocusableInTouchMode(true) in the end of
> the onCreate method of SqueakActivity. Without that, the activity view
> could not get keyboard focus, even when touched. I haven't tested
> whether the focus is restored properly when activity changes its
> state, but such change may require more support anyway.
> 
> See here *:
> 
> http://code.google.com/p/squeakvm-tablet/source/browse/project/src/org/squeak/android/SqueakActivity.java
> 
> I also changed the SqueakView class so that the physical "Menu" button
> toggles the soft keyboard. I wish it did not take so much screen space
> ;)
> 
> http://code.google.com/p/squeakvm-tablet/source/browse/project/src/org/squeak/android/SqueakView.java
> 
> One thing I cannot figure out: how to send an event for BackSpace key.
> 
> The following works for alphanumerics (event is the second argument of
> View.onKeyDown method):
> 
>                                 int uchar = event.getUnicodeChar();
>                                 vm.sendEvent(   2 /* EventTypeKeyboard */,
>                                                 0 /* timeStamp */,
>                                                 uchar /* charCode */,
>                                                 0 /* EventKeyChar */,
>                                                 0 /* modifiers */,
>                                                 uchar /* utf32Code */,
>                                                 0 /* reserved1 */,
>                                                 0 /* windowIndex */);
>                                 vm.interpret();
> 
> Characters typed on the soft keyboard appear e. g. in a workspace
> where a cursor is blinking, window frame becomes red, etc. which means
> input works. But pressing DEL does not have any effect.  Enter works
> (cursor moves to newline) What values should I put into the
> sqInputEvent structure for DEL?
> 
> Thanks for any ideas.
> 
> ------------------------------
> * I forked the squeak-android-vm project into
> http://code.google.com/p/squeakvm-tablet This project space has not
> been set up properly yet in terms of documentation; I just wanted to
> share my findings with other possibly interested developers.
> 
> -- 
> Dimitry Golubovsky
> 
> Anywhere on the Web