[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Keyboard for things which don't use Gtk (was: commit signal)[1~

[From: Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

> I've almost completed a port of Frotz[1], but I'm stuck on one last
> detail. The application needs to be able to receive an event each
> time a v-keypad key has been pressed.

For a game which depends solely on text input (i.e. keyboard should be
visible all the time), I would probably make a separate/specialized
text input method.  It's very awkward to type things without a special
keyboard, so having shortcuts in the actual keyboard for things like:
"look", "inventory", "s/w/n/e" etc would be very nice.
(s/w/n/e could be in a form of a "compass" :))

This could be based on Matchbox-keyboard:
	http://svn.o-hand.com/repos/matchbox/trunk/matchbox-keyboard/
Its keyboard layout can be configured with XML.

The keyboard can be a separate process which you start at the
same time as Frotz, then you either:
- Embed the keyboard into Frotz window (like GPE login does?), or
- Set the keyboard as a separate toolbar window (this is just
  a standard WM property for the window)


	- Eero

Note: Matchbox-keyboard is not a replacement for the device keyboard
(that has much more sophisticated user interaction), but it should be
nice for things which don't have GtkIMContext.