Are there any multi touch keyboard apps or can this even be done?
hmarcus said:
Are there any multi touch keyboard apps or can this even be done?
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Despite what you may have heard, multi-touch IS available on Android 2.x out of the box. It is just turned off on built-in apps in the US and this includes the keyboard, Maps, Gmail, Browser, etc. There are two ways to get a multi-touch keyboard. Either someone develops one (if it hasn't already been done, I've never checked) or we way for a ROM to be developed and have the dev enable MT in the ROM, as well as the keyboard.
I'm starting to see a bunch of multi touch apps in the market mainly drawing apps and there are a bunch of gallery apps too. Multi touch keyboard is needed very badly I hope we can get one soon.
Technically, the keyboard is already multitouch. You can see this by holding down a key and pressing another key. The instant you press the second key, it triggers the first. You can compare this behavior with the pre-2.0 behavior where it would simply act like you had a single finger on the key in the middle of your two fingers. It might not quite be as nice as the iPhone's implementation(you can't hold down shift and press a letter), but it is multitouch.
Smart Keyboard is supposedly multi-touch, but it's a rather infant app...
The stock Android Keyboard is multitouch enabled. I don't get why people think it's not. It only shows the large letter under the first finger, but that's by design... let me explain:
Press 'A' with your left thumb, then 'P' with your right. You'll only see the large 'A' under your thumb, and 'P' will look unpressed. If you release 'A' now, however, it will be typed, and the large 'P' will now appear under your right thumb. But if you release 'P' under your right thumb first, it won't be typed if you're still holding 'A'. The reason is, if you press one key, and then press and release a second so quickly that you still haven't released the first, then this is probably not an intentional tap of a letter, but an accidental brush of the screen, and it is ignored. Letters are always typed in the order you touched them, otherwise typing would be much harder at high speed. The second touch is recognized, but you don't see it until you release the first touch, because if you release the second touch before the first, it will be ignored. So type at high speed, with two thumbs at a time, and the keyboard will 'just work' and keep up. Trust me.
the dolphin browser lets you use the iphone zooming method. european N1's will have this ability anyways (I guess) since its not protected by a patent (illegal to patent such a development).
carnegie0107 said:
The stock Android Keyboard is multitouch enabled. I don't get why people think it's not. It only shows the large letter under the first finger, but that's by design... let me explain:
Press 'A' with your left thumb, then 'P' with your right. You'll only see the large 'A' under your thumb, and 'P' will look unpressed. If you release 'A' now, however, it will be typed, and the large 'P' will now appear under your right thumb. But if you release 'P' under your right thumb first, it won't be typed if you're still holding 'A'. The reason is, if you press one key, and then press and release a second so quickly that you still haven't released the first, then this is probably not an intentional tap of a letter, but an accidental brush of the screen, and it is ignored. Letters are always typed in the order you touched them, otherwise typing would be much harder at high speed. The second touch is recognized, but you don't see it until you release the first touch, because if you release the second touch before the first, it will be ignored. So type at high speed, with two thumbs at a time, and the keyboard will 'just work' and keep up. Trust me.
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Right, but that leaves you with no ability to say, hold down **** and push a letter to capitalize. What people want is for both keys to register when you are holding two keys down, in the order that you pressed them.
hondamx525 said:
Right, but that leaves you with no ability to say, hold down **** and push a letter to capitalize. What people want is for both keys to register when you are holding two keys down, in the order that you pressed them.
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Why do you need to hold down shift? Taping shift once does the same thing as holding ****, think of it was "sticky keys" if you're from a windows machine. Theres never a need to hold the shift button. Double tap it for capslock if you really need caps
严重鄙视标题党！我代表月亮惩罚你！
callant said:
严重鄙视标题党！我代表月亮惩罚你！
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you win the game
hondamx525 said:
Right, but that leaves you with no ability to say, hold down **** and push a letter to capitalize. What people want is for both keys to register when you are holding two keys down, in the order that you pressed them.
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I agree with this guy. I don't know what the other guy is talking about. The letters don't queue. I have trouble typing fast because every other letter doesn't register.
so silly to have disabled such a useful funtion, only to most likely enable it at a later date, or at least we would hope.
Related
Right, I can't see an Issues list for this device yet so I'll start one:
1. A couple of times now, I've left my phone to charge overnight and woke up to an unresponsive device. Power button does nothing, screen is off and only way to get it device back up and running is to poke the soft-reset button OR remove and reinsert the battery.
2. Unresponsive buttons: every now and then the "right" button of the D-Pad does nothing, then suddenly it will start working again, same with the "Back" button though much more infrequent/noticable than the D-Pad issue I've experienced.
I did not expierence the first problem with the charging issue.
To close and app you can use the (arrow pointing left) key but sometimes i have to push it like 3 or 4 times before it respond.
Same with the touchscreen but i fixed that by increasing the touchpad sensitivity with a regedit.
My device has reset a few times while I been reading email or texts.
John
Guys. The whole phone besides the keyboard is touch sensitive. So the whole front keys and touchscreen. Increase sensitivity and it should work fine.
Kraize92 said:
Guys. The whole phone besides the keyboard is touch sensitive. So the whole front keys and touchscreen. Increase sensitivity and it should work fine.
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Erm, I'm sorry but that's not right is it. The D-Pad, Send, End, Home and Back buttons are actual buttons as opposed to touch sensitive.
The zoom wheel is obviously a "touch" area too. The issue I am descriping seems to suggest that the switches might be a bit flakey rather than anything else.
no he is right all the buttons are PRESSURE (he said touch) sensitive..when they unvieled the diamond the ceo of htc demonstrated that the keys are pressure sensitie and even the cameria button can SENSE when your finger is approaching to ready the zoom ..here is the youtube vid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTd3SUPSJsMit
pazookie said:
no he is right all the buttons are PRESSURE (he said touch) sensitive..when they unvieled the diamond the ceo of htc demonstrated that the keys are pressure sensitie and even the cameria button can SENSE when your finger is approaching to ready the zoom ..here is the youtube vid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTd3SUPSJsMit
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Sorry my bad. WM phones used to be called touch sensitve but in reality they're pressure sensitive. The only touch sensitive phones out currently are the iPhones and the Omni I would say.
Syphon Filter said:
Erm, I'm sorry but that's not right is it. The D-Pad, Send, End, Home and Back buttons are actual buttons as opposed to touch sensitive.
The zoom wheel is obviously a "touch" area too. The issue I am descriping seems to suggest that the switches might be a bit flakey rather than anything else.
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If the were actual buttons they would be capable of being pushed in which it's not possible to do
Issues:
HTC task man doesnt work properly.
Poor reception
Too many startup apps/services put on by htc to provide touch interface (which i hate)
why on eart you use operaloder on phones stratup just to get 2-3 more seconds fast load time for opera.
i think htc just over done this touch crap.
could anoyone access setupfiles on rom so i can use plain wm6.1
Kraize92 said:
If the were actual buttons they would be capable of being pushed in which it's not possible to do
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Hang on, you clearly don't own either Touch Pro or a Diamond, the D-Pad, Call, End, Home and Back buttons CAN BE PUSHED IN. They are actual buttons.
Syphon Filter said:
Hang on, you clearly don't own either Touch Pro or a Diamond, the D-Pad, Call, End, Home and Back buttons CAN BE PUSHED IN. They are actual buttons.
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No. I'm sure of it. I have demoed both a touch pro and a diamond. I meant that they CANNOT be pushed in as you can on the kaiser. I know this for a fact and on every video you will see that it is mentioned as a pressure sensitive all around except for the keyboard. I'm sure of that. They are not real buttons. I guess you could push it in if it's just a piece of glass and paper underneath the actual pressure sensitive touchpad, but it wouldn't make it real buttons. I know what I'm talking about Unless HTC suddenly decided to make them real buttons which would kill their profits so I'm assuming that they wouldn't do that either. I demoed it about 2-3 weeks ago.
Syphon Filter said:
Right, I can't see an Issues list for this device yet so I'll start one:
1. A couple of times now, I've left my phone to charge overnight and woke up to an unresponsive device. Power button does nothing, screen is off and only way to get it device back up and running is to poke the soft-reset button OR remove and reinsert the battery.
2. Unresponsive buttons: every now and then the "right" button of the D-Pad does nothing, then suddenly it will start working again, same with the "Back" button though much more infrequent/noticable than the D-Pad issue I've experienced.
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1 - Not had that problem - hopefully that'll go after your next hard reset or ROM update - these damn things always have, and always will behave differently for different people, it seems!
2 - My Back button missed my press once or twice, but I think it's more of a hardware issue than a software issue though (or possibly user error!). I'll tell you now though, hitting the "Right" button on my Diamond was next to impossible. It was extremely stiff, and would eventually register as a press on the "Hang Up" button. Drove me absolutely mental! But I think I was the only Diamond user who had that problem, and my Raphael is fine.
having got one in my hand - they are tactile push bottons - i.e you push them until it clicks before an action happens.
ardsar said:
having got one in my hand - they are tactile push bottons - i.e you push them until it clicks before an action happens.
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Then I must be crazy. Since all I have to do is touch the button and a action happens. But my pressure threshold is very high.
Kraize92 said:
No. I'm sure of it. I have demoed both a touch pro and a diamond. I meant that they CANNOT be pushed in as you can on the kaiser. I know this for a fact and on every video you will see that it is mentioned as a pressure sensitive all around except for the keyboard. I'm sure of that. They are not real buttons. I guess you could push it in if it's just a piece of glass and paper underneath the actual pressure sensitive touchpad, but it wouldn't make it real buttons. I know what I'm talking about Unless HTC suddenly decided to make them real buttons which would kill their profits so I'm assuming that they wouldn't do that either. I demoed it about 2-3 weeks ago.
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I'm not going to get into an argument over this but the 9 buttons (Home, Back, Call, End, Up, Down, Left, Right and the centre of the D-Pad) on the face of the Diamond and the Touch Pro are buttons which have a tactile feedback, a press will not register until you "feel" the button pressed. The only thing in that area that is a "touch sensitive" thing is the zoom wheel.
Just because the area looks flush does not mean they are not buttons. There's a single piece of material that covers that area but I can assure you there are individual switches under there that provide a tactile feedback. You HAVE to feel that feedback for the button to do anything, simply touching it will have no effect unless you are using the zoom wheel functionality.
If you believe anything else you are wrong.
Kraize92 said:
Then I must be crazy. Since all I have to do is touch the button and a action happens. But my pressure threshold is very high.
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1. What do you mean "my pressure threshold is very high"? Are you talking about the registry settings?
2. I thought you didnt have a Touch Pro or Diamond?
I said I didn't own one. Doesn't mean I don't have one in hand right now I have family members and friends that work for HTC america and AT&T.
Yeah. Registry settings/Advance Config for diamond
Kraize92 said:
I said I didn't own one. Doesn't mean I don't have one in hand right now I have family members and friends that work for HTC america and AT&T.
Yeah. Registry settings/Advance Config for diamond
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Yes. Ok.
Anyway, so you're saying that device you have in your hand right now has no tactile feedback on the front face buttons?
If have insiders at HTC why did you ask for donations so you could get a Touch Pro in the other thread?
Syphon Filter said:
Yes. Ok.
Anyway, so you're saying that device you have in your hand right now has no tactile feedback on the front face buttons?
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EDIT: Okay. Maybe I'm mistaken. It's only the d-pad that's pressure sensitive. The buttons are tactile even though they feel as if they are pressure sensitive because I don't push into it like I did with the front face buttons on my kaiser.
ah, you've seen the light. The button DOES push in but the panel is one solid "sheet" that covers all the buttons.
The "wheel" is the only touch sensitive bit. The 5 navigation functions of the d-pad (up down left right select) are all tactile buttons that work off little switches.
Syphon Filter said:
ah, you've seen the light. The button DOES push in but the panel is one solid "sheet" that covers all the buttons.
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Actually. I should show you the light I'm right.
[Link]
Click number 3 and read this caption: "Swipe your finger across the screen to scroll through contracts, zoom, and pan web pages, browse your music library, and more, or press the touch-sensitive buttons to navigate and control your phone."
So concluding to that original fact that I was indeed right
ok if u all knew about this call me stupid but i stumbled on this by accident. when typing on the full qerty sip on touch pro if you hold a key down for a sec it puts the symbol above it on! cool huh i been hitting 123 all this time
chetmichaels said:
ok if u all knew about this call me stupid but i stumbled on this by accident. when typing on the full qerty sip on touch pro if you hold a key down for a sec it puts the symbol above it on! cool huh i been hitting 123 all this time
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Excellent find! Works for me too....geeze which I would of known that a while back...hahaha
hey, thanks!
I had been hitting 123 all the time, too!
You'd be surprised how many people don't know this and many other neat tricks. Simply because they aren't published in the manual or were too lazy to read it.
speaking of keyboard tricks. check out finger keyboard v2.1
i installed it a few days ago and cant stop using it, even when it takes half as long to use the hard keyboard
and no i dont work for them
chetmichaels said:
when typing on the full qerty sip on touch pro if you hold a key down for a sec it puts the symbol above it on! cool huh i been hitting 123 all this time
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POCKETCM Keyboard does the same thing. Depending on the layout of the keyboard, you can hit the letter "k" or hold it down and it will type in a Capital "K" ... saves from hitting SHIFT+Key. Or.. hold down a key and puts the number...
One thing this does that FingerKB does not do is that you hold down a KEY and you can CUT, COPY, or PASTE.
I used to use the stock Keyboard to CNTL-C (COPY) etc... but now, just a single keypress...
if you hit shift or go into caps on finger keyboard you have cut copy paste as wella s a buttload of other shortcuts (ie www, http, .com, .net) and a bunch of phrases like where are you? When will you be here? what are you doing? etc
I've tried 2-3 different keyboards, and I cannot figure out how to select a word from the middle of sentence, or place the cursor there if I need to. For example in this short paragraph, if I need to click after the word and above, I just can't figure out how to do it.
Feelin' kinda dense
Most phones have a dpad, but since the Captivate doesn't it's a little harder. On the Swype keyboard, you can swipe from the Swype key (the little squiggle with the i on top) to the "sym" key.
That opens up another page of keys with arrow buttons on it. Android really needs to do something about text input soon, it can be a pain.
Use your finger to tap on the screen.
Of course that's the first thing I tried. Maybe I just need to lear to have the touch.
for as long as I've had my phone, which, of course, is as long as I've had it rooted, my messaging app has acted extremely odd.
Using the arrow keys and the back-space key causes strange, and often app-breaking, behavior. it seems to be registering the key presses in at least 2 other areas of the app. it always scrolls to the top of the conversation, it highlights conversations in the main message window, and it highlights options in the menus before I even have them open. it seems that the window that lists the conversations, as well as the options menu, are still listening to key presses, even when I'm writing a text. often, the arrow keys and the back-space key stop working all together until I back out of the text-input and re-open the keyboard. this happens litterally every time i write a text message, which is a lot.
all I want the arrow keys to do when I'm in a text field is move the cursor, not jump the highlight to the send button, not scroll through auto-complete options, not jump to the conversation window and scroll through individual texts, and certainly not control the selection of items in windows and menus that I don't even have open.
Also, when pressing 2 keys in quick succession, it often only registers one, TH, especially. I'd say its just registering the second press as a movement of the first contact point, istead of a second touch, like old laptop track-pads, but this device is more than capable of registering multi-touch. also, if you hold one key, and press another, the letter from the first appears on the second key for a brief second...
I'm using virtuous ville v.1.4.0 stock, but I've installed and uninstalled a couple other keyboard apps, can I re-install the stock ICS keyboard? is it a sense keyboard? is this happening to anyone else with this rom or with the 4.0.3 os?
thanks for your help
-Peter
god I miss my G1... stupid friggin slabs. this was the first, and will be the last phone that I ever buy without a real keyboard. this touch-screen only nonsense is ridiculous. it would be fast if it were possible to be accurate and keys weren't literally touching each other. why can't I tell it how much space I want between the keys, so I press nothing, instead of the wrong key? there would be no haptic feedback so I knew to press it again, and I wouldn't constantly be pressing the shift, space, and num keys, which the auto-correct doesn't account for in the slightest, instead of the A key or any of the bottom row of letters .I'm tired of sacrificing so much functionality just so phones can look slicker and break easier.
Don't know why it fails, sorry.... The stock ICS keyboard is not a sense keyboard, there is one on market looks like this one https://play.google.com/store/apps/....android.inputmethod.latin.ice_cream_sandwich
Or you could grab a keyboard from any CM9 or AOKP rom zip file, it's named Latin-IME.apk iirc. The jellybean keyboard is similar but nicer somehow, possible it works on ICS. Also SwiftKey is really good.
Thanks for the suggestions! I do, in fact, have a sense keyboard and I do need arrow keys, which the non-sense keyboards, including the jellybean apk don't seem to have. I still can't fathom why anyone would ever prefer these to a real keyboard and a d-pad... also, the jellybean keyboard still has the same trouble with TH's. has anyone here, who shares my frustration with soft keyboards, found a decent keyboard app?
I wish there were decent quality, mini keyboards, too. Wireless or micro-usb would both work, as I'd probably make a case to hold it with my phone. I've only seen a couple, and they're either too big to be practical, or poor quality.
I apologize for my negative attitude. this is just frustrating, as texting is my main form of communication, and I post to forums from my phone quite often, so typing is important to me.
thanks again
-Peter
This is what SwiftKey 3 looks like if you activate the arrows and the Holo theme... One month trial.
I'm thinking of moving to T-Mobile, and I've seen some pics of the myTouch 4G Slide / HTC Doubleshot. However, the qwerty keypad seems to be missing arrow keys... Is there any arrow keys (or equivalent) on the qwerty keypad? I do some manipulation on spreadsheets and arrow keys are important for me.
The middle sensor button replaces the arrow keys.
AndroAsc said:
I'm thinking of moving to T-Mobile, and I've seen some pics of the myTouch 4G Slide / HTC Doubleshot. However, the qwerty keypad seems to be missing arrow keys... Is there any arrow keys (or equivalent) on the qwerty keypad? I do some manipulation on spreadsheets and arrow keys are important for me.
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If you notice on the bottom of the phone in the center there is an optical trackpad. It takes the place of arrow keys, you can use it to position the cursor. It also moves the homescreen back and forth and with stock roms can be pressed to wake up or put to sleep (some other roms have managed to implement that, as well, but not all).
I have the Slide. Since you asked on XDA I assume you are a coder or an aspiring coder.
I'd like to share my thoughts on the optical trackpad. To me as one who uses vi in ConnectBot console, the trackpad is no replacement for the keypad. The difference is that the keypad has the typomatic function where you want to go way to the right, just press and hold the right button. Can't do that with the optical trackpad; you have to slide your finger to the right 80 times to go there. (I know the vi $ command does it, but that's a 2-key action instead of 1 key because there isn't a dedicated '2' key: alt+2).
I'd add that the optical trackpad does implement the ctrl function when pressing the optical trackpad button when used under ConnectBot.
l00g33k said:
I have the Slide. Since you asked on XDA I assume you are a coder or an aspiring coder.
I'd like to share my thoughts on the optical trackpad. To me as one who uses vi in ConnectBot console, the trackpad is no replacement for the keypad. The difference is that the keypad has the typomatic function where you want to go way to the right, just press and hold the right button. Can't do that with the optical trackpad; you have to slide your finger to the right 80 times to go there. (I know the vi $ command does it, but that's a 2-key action instead of 1 key because there isn't a dedicated '2' key: alt+2).
I'd add that the optical trackpad does implement the ctrl function when pressing the optical trackpad button when used under ConnectBot.
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I prefer using adb on computer instead of using a built in terminal
Riyal said:
I prefer using adb on computer instead of using a built in terminal
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To be quite honest, i'd rather do everything I would do in adb through the terminal directly on the device if possible.
Especially anymore with the times few and very far between (at least at the moment) that I have access to a real computer, terminal capability has become more of a necessity then a preference.
About the arrow keys:
If you root then you can replace the keylayout file to add them, the pictures on the physical keys won't match up is all.
My first modified keylayout changed home to up, menu to down, back to left and genius to right arrow keys on the slide out keyboard - leaving those same keys in-tact for functionality on the face of the device.
When you slide out the keyboard, those four keys have the same function as the four keys at the bottom of the screen on the face of the device - seemed to me like they were begging for the change.
Aside from that, though, as nifty as the optical trackpad button is, and how incredibly useful it can be at times, it remains a poor substitute for actual arrow keys themselves.
Seriously considering getting a mytouch 4G slide, but the lack of arrow keys is the current deal breaker.
Can the trackpad be used efficiently to replace arrow keys? I do a lot of spreadsheet manipulation, and was wondering if it's going to work as well as arrow keys. It seems to be immensely irritating whenever I enter data into a cell, I need to move my fingers away from the QWERTY keyboard to the trackpad in order to move to the next cell, and then move my fingers back to the QWERTY board again...
Other posts here commented on key remapping, do the remapped keys alleviate the problem somewhat?
I think yes it's possible to remap some of it's keys into arrow keys.
It's possible to create new combination keys like pressing the www/.com + the letter O key would make up for the up arrow key. Some of the people here know how to mess with the keyconfigs so it's really good asking help with them. I just brought up the idea that it's possible but haven't really invested time looking into it but yeah I'mm 100% sure it's possible.