Use of DPAD with Soft IME

[thedigitalsean]

I have a device with a 5-way d-pad but without a qwerty keyboard. The
form factor of the device is such that I would like to enable one-
handed operation. As such, I would like to enable complete
interaction with the device using just the d-pad. The issue I run
into is with keyboard input. For example, when an EditText is
selected via the d-pad, the soft keyboard pops up as expected, but the
d-pad cannot be used to move the cursor (change the focus) to a letter
on the keyboard. I would like to be able to move the focus over to a
letter and press the dpad center button to type the letter. Is this
possible? I would consider extending LatinIME so that it takes focus
if necessary, but am not sure if there is an where if I take focus
away from the View object then the IME won't know where to send the
characters? Are there other options?

Thanks,
Sean

[Dianne Hackborn]

You will need to make your own IME that handles the key events you want to consume.

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[thedigitalsean]

Thanks Dianne. Is there documentation or a tutorial somewhere where I
can figure out how to properly create a project that extends
LatinIME? I found this discussion:

http://groups.google.com/group/android-framework/browse_thread/thread/572303b9c8c7f021?fwc=1

But it requires changing the LatinIME code to remove private
references. For my device, I am compiling the platform from source
using the Rowboat distribution for TI-based devices. As such, I have
access to the private sources and would like to use that source tree
to compile if possible.

Thanks very much for your help.

Sean

> hack...@android.com

[Dianne Hackborn]

You can't extend LatinIME, that is a separate self-contained app.  You can either start with the SoftKeyboard sample code to build your own keyboard, or make your own fork of LatinIME and fix anything you need to like use of private APIs.  If what you are doing is not going on Market, then there isn't anything you need to do -- LatinIME is already part of the platform, just build your platform from the source and modify it as you like.

hac...@android.com

[Shrenik Vikam]

Since its SoftKeyboard works as service , Does the custom SoftKeyboard will get the DPAD events ?