QWERTY virtual keyboard anytime soon?

engk · Post by **engk** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:03 am

First a big thank you to the people porting SCUMMVM to the pocketpc. Its almost perfect and easily the best interpreter out there.

I know everyone complains about the virtual keyboard. But it really hurts my head to think of the alphabet sequentially. It seems that the uncountable hours spent at the keyboard takes precedence over language lessens in kindergarden.

Is the team considering implementing a qwerty keyboard like the one in pocketdos or even a predictive pad stretched horizontally in the lower 320x20 portion of the screen? I think you can squeeze three rows in, and a smaller key size is still preferable to the current format.

knakos · Post by **knakos** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 12:20 pm

If we get a full keyboard by means of the unified small deviced backend, I don't mind. But in the meantime, my answer here still stands. That is:

On screen keyboard's usability: ScummVM and the supported engines did not traditionally rely on a full keyboard being present. AGI which mandates it got the predictive input method. So better on-screen keyboard support is of lower priority for me (but not 0).

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:01 pm

knakos wrote:If we get a full keyboard by means of the unified small deviced backend, I don't mind. But in the meantime, my answer here still stands.

Of course, if someone were to add that there'd be quite a number of keyboard layouts to consider: QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY, Dvorak, ...

knakos · Post by **knakos** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 3:16 pm

Yes. I see the "political correctness" argument eriktorbjorn is trying to make.

And while I see that, I raise you one Japanese keyboard layout which will enable a true experience for all FM-TOWNS games (plus peres will love it).

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 3:57 pm

knakos wrote:Yes. I see the "political correctness" argument eriktorbjorn is trying to make.

Actually, I came this close to writing something very politically incorrect about the German and the French having their own variants.

knakos wrote:And while I see that, I raise you one Japanese keyboard layout which will enable a true experience for all FM-TOWNS games (plus peres will love it).

How about the infamous "space-cadet keyboard" (pictures here)? That way we can be reasonably certain all necessary character are present. Well, except - maybe - the Japanese ones.

knakos · Post by **knakos** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 4:19 pm

I am humble.

Post by **sev** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:53 am

eriktorbjorn wrote:How about the infamous "space-cadet keyboard" (pictures here)? That way we can be reasonably certain all necessary character are present. Well, except - maybe - the Japanese ones.

Well, ZX Spectrum keyboard was not easier

.

Back to the topic.

I was expecting to have configurable virtual keyboard written as part of one of Summer of Code tasks. There are several bits of that implementation in our patch tracker. Though the student still promises to implement that functionality.

Eugene