Virtual Keyboard Win7

[Armanda Kicks]

I would like to build my own virtual keyboard for my windows 7 tablet.I am not starting from zero in programming; I just have no idea on where to start to make a system level device like a virtual keyboard.

Drivers are written in C (not even C++; just C), and they use the Windows Driver Kit for development. There is insufficient documentation, period (the sooner you admit this, the better). Pick up a copy of the following books if you don't already have them: Windows Internals, Advanced Windows Debugging, Oney's Programming the Windows Driver Model, and Developing Drivers with the Windows Driver Foundation. I strongly recommend using KMDF, since it makes writing drivers only extremely difficult rather than insanely near-impossible. Subscribe to OSR's NTInsider and read their mailing list archives (they are the only source I know that has all the missing details on driver writing). Begin working your personal contacts because there's a medium-to-high chance you'll need to talk to someone deep within Microsoft.

I am using VMPK - virtual midi piano keyboard, and would like to map its midi output as an input to pianoteq, but I am not sure how to go about this. I think I need a connection bus or some sort of digital interface. Anyone know how to do this? I searched and found other users were using VMPK on GNU/linux.

Thanks, I'll try it out. I want to be able to produce sound using the computer keyboard, but letter keys in Pianoteq are mapped as hotkeys. Documentation search seems only to yield results about external keyboard. Also, I want to use my own key mapping.

Try typing "control-k"; this brings up a window showing a computer keyboard. The hotkeys are disabled when you do this and you can use your computer keyboard to play notes. USB-connected midi "real" keyboards can be easily obtained for not much money these days....

Good, I didn't know. It says right there in the Windows menu. A nice selection of controls are available in this view, too. The keyboard range, though, is much larger in VMPK, and a pure virtual keyboard front-end to pianoteq.

I love my CME X-key Air37. Like the NanoKey, but the keys have full width for piano keys (not nano). Kinda clicky, but that is ignorable in short order (especially with headphones on). It's great for travel, with just my tablet and some headphones.

Interesting. When I tried the XKey it was horrible feeling with a totally inconsistent velocity response and the marketed poly AT was also producing a lot of noisy values... I just don't trust CME to do a high-quality product.

Using standard applications with the touch-based operating system seemed fine, and really the only issues I found was Chrome and Firefox do not allow for finger scrolling on webpages. After some digging a solution was found (more specifically, see: Chrometouch and Grab and Drag for Firefox).

For the graphic artists out there, the RAM and CPU of this tablet more than satisfy the performance beasts known as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, and to date I have seen no issues working with them. The stylus pen does wonders for photo editing and graphics design, and when paired with the Bluetooth keyboard makes editing fast and precise.

A step above the simple handwriting interface is the Microsoft application called OneNote, which comes extremely in handy for scribbling notes and collecting thoughts. When linked to your Windows Live account, these virtual notes and scribbles can be pushed into the cloud for continual availability to revise and update. With OneNote, the EP121 goes beyond the realm of a computer to become a notebook, a stetchbook, and even to-do list.

So did the Asus EP121 with its massive CPU and RAM power and full Windows 7 touch capabilities live up to my figurative steroid enhancing expectations? The short answer is absolutely yes. Its fast, touch-friendly, and perfect for doing just about anything tablet related.

Edge will not activate the on-screen keyboard. We have Kiosk machines that now have Edge (Stable) on them. The on-screen keyboard opens on login, but if it is closed, no way to reopen it. IE would give a little icon if a text input field was made the focus.

@Keith Davis We're sorry to hear that. Currently, kiosks are likely not fully supported, I'm moving this post so that our Enterprise team can see it and let you know if they have any further questions or insights.

Thanks for getting in touch with us! As Fawkes mentioned, Kiosk is a work in progress for us...so all feedback is welcomed and keenly listened to. I'm pumped to hear that you are using the new Edge for your Kiosk needs! :)

I detached the keyboard base in my Surface Book running Windows 10 - to mimic a touch only setup. Then I tried navigating to bing.com in Edge Stable and also in IE. I was able to tap into the address bar in Edge (or IE) or the search bar in Bing page and the on-screen keyboard promptly popped up. If I dismissed the keyboard, all I had to do was tap again in the address bar or the search box to have it pop up again. This was the same behavior in Edge Stable and IE too.

Are you by chance still using Windows in "Desktop mode" - meaning Windows possibly thinks you have a keyboard attached? Or maybe you want the virtual keyboard to popup, even with a physical keyboard attached? Here are a few links I thought might be helpful for you:

Hopefully these will help resolve your problem. If not, I'll need more help from you to try to reproduce the scenario on my end. Are you trying this on a specific website? If so, can you try this in a non-Kiosk touch device that you may have access to, to see if this is a site-specific issue? Maybe the site is not using the right HTML element, etc that helps Edge and Windows understand that it needs a keyboard? How did you configure the Kiosk setup? Is Edge in fullscreen mode or does the address bar show up? Anything else you can share about your setup, including which site you are trying this on?

Thanks for all the input, but as it turns on it was working after all. We have 2 devices, one was Windows 7 and one was Windows 10. It appeared that Edge on both was not activating the on-screen keyboard, but after further testing, only the Windows 7 machine using Edge was not working. We removed that machine and are using only the Windows 10 one now. FYI, it is a machine that does not have a physical keyboard attached (HP All-in-one).

I have an ASUS All In One Touch Screen Desktop. I have installed Windows 10 Enterprise on it and got all the latest patches to date. When logged as a user and switching on Tablet mode, I see the virtual keyboard but when I switch to Kiosk mode, the virtual keyboard won't show. I have unplugged the physical keyboard and rebooted the machine and still no virtual keyboard. I have even tried adding these three keys to registry

@Raj_GS I found another issue. I have a simple website hosted locally (Wordpress using Apache, MySql, PHP) that I was trying to open up in Edge. What I found is that when I reboot the computer, after logging in the Edge browser just has a grey background screen and the mouse cursor shows up as blinking (loading) sign and that is it. Things get stuck and nothing further happens. I waited 10 minutes (even thought I have applicated restart set to 5 minutes) and nothing happens. If I hit ctrl+alt+del to logoff Kiosk and log back in as Admin and then logout and log back in as Kiosk, everything loads up. I figured there might be an issue with Apache and Mysql service starting while Edge trying to access the page and going crazy. To troubleshoot, I switched the website to a simply static HTML page with one page only. What I noticed is something similar. The simple image is a loading gif and the gif animation gets stuck with the cursor again blinking and nothing else happens - this time only apache involved and no mySQL db. Then I tried the same but instead of using a URL, just provided the direct URL to the file "file:///C:/load/index.html" and same results. Upon reboot and first login to Kiosk, Edge just gets stuck in a loop of some sort and nothing more.

Then I figured maybe there is an issue with the Kiosk account so I deleted it and created a new one with a different name altogether and still the same exact issue. I am able to reproduce this issue consistently.

@The_Naval_Museum , do you mind starting a new thread for this? Having separate threads for issues would help with discoverability of the new issue and will also keep the original thread's intent intact.

Also, for the original issue, do you mind submitting a feedback via Feedback Hub (the admin or some other normal user) under the category "Security and Privacy" > "Assigned Access"? This will collect additional logs relevant to the category, which might help the dev team debug the issue better

I've always had excellent luck with Win10 Pro in Kiosk mode. Win11 Pro was good too until this summer. Any system built with the most recent clean ISO (either directly from microsoft.com or from the OEM like Dell) build, including 23H2, refuses to be consistent with the touch keyboard. Of course, there is no "tablet mode" on 11 and it's supposed to work, but even though the About shows "Touch support with 10 points", the display works great as a mouse, but with nothing attached to the PC, in this case an OptiPlex with a fully clean install of 11 Pro with the only changes being allowing it to apply available Updates, the touch keyboard will NOT display in any app, including Edge, which means no Kiosk mode which I need for over 3 dozen aging Windows 10 Pro kiosks. There are a plethora of complaints all over the web about this but none of the hacks seem to work. If I can't find a solution with 11, the other solution that I have already tested and know works is to wipe the 10 machines and go to Ubuntu in Kiosk mode. That keeps my very capable i7/8GB RAM/SSD Optiplexes out of the landfill for several more years and negates the need to pay Dell or Microsoft for more systems. I'd rather go with 11, but at some point Microsoft needs to step up and fix this or at least provide some guidance.

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