iOS custom keylayouts

[Cattus Thraex]

With iOS 11 it seems we really go towards a truly OS, therefore is is tempting to adopt it, as a portable device. Q: could be build complex keylayouts using combining diacritical marks? Yesterday I tested how a Pages file is opened in iOS, and was really delighted, finally it does not lose information. I have the feeling iOS is at the point of displaying OK files with CDM’s, but cannot write such combinations. Am I wrong?

[Tom Gewecke]

> On Jun 17, 2017, at 1:00 PM, Cattus Thraex <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have the feeling iOS is at the point of displaying OK files with CDM’s, but cannot write such combinations. Am I wrong?

Why do you think you cannot write them? Do you have a specific examples? There are all kinds of 3rd party keyboards and utilities like Unicode Pad available since iOS 8 which let you type everything in Unicode.

[Sorin Paliga]

My intention would be to convert, if possible, my linguistic keylayouts, written for macOS or, in the worst case, to re-write it if reasonable. I have the feeling current iOS does not allow dead keys and successive keys in the CDM area. Or does it?

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[Tom Gewecke]

> On Jun 17, 2017, at 3:23 PM, Sorin Paliga <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My intention would be to convert, if possible, my linguistic keylayouts

Have you found tools somewhere that would enable you to do that?

I have a 3rd party keyboard on my iPad called Greek Polytonic which seems to work via dead keys. But the one supplied by Apple works by typing the diacritic after the base letter.

What do you mean by «successive keys in the CDM area»?

[Sorin Paliga]

I have a 3rd party keyboard on my iPad called Greek Polytonic which seems to work via dead keys.  

Good news

But the one supplied by Apple works by typing the diacritic after the base letter.

What do you mean by «successive keys in the CDM area»?

E.g. smth like this (I do hope it is rendered correctly):

ŏ̱̣́ṁ̱

[Tom Gewecke]

On Jun 18, 2017, at 3:05 AM, Sorin Paliga <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:

What do you mean by «successive keys in the CDM area»?

E.g. smth like this (I do hope it is rendered correctly):

ŏ̱̣́ṁ̱

My iPad has no problem displaying this correctly.  The app Unicode Pad has a rudimentary «keyboard» , where you can place any unicode character on a keys and then type strings of text to copy/paste elsewhere.  I had no problem putting combining diacritics on keys and adding them correctly (after) to base characters such as your example.  

But as far as making real iOS keyboards, I am not aware of any tools like Ukelele.  Have you found some?

[Sorin Paliga]

I have found something, but they do not seem to create what I need. I do not have any iPad at the moment, my daughter had one, and she did not like it either, she switched to a MBP. Now, with iOS 11 coming soon and iPad Pro running a seemingly genuine pro OS, as iOS seems to be, purchasing an iPad Pro may be tempting. Indeed, Pages for iOS can now beautifully display texts with CDM’s, which is a great step forward. Now, my problem would be to test whether I can write such linguistic texts without much trouble using a custom keylayout for iOS. I do not even know how they are installed, I understand that one such app

http://keypad.iosproapps.com

may install a custom keylayout. You may find other discussions if you type smth like ‘custom keyboard layouts in iOS’.

The CDM’s above/below o and m were created by successively typing CDM’s with my custom keylayout and using dead keys, it took me several second without any other trick. My guess is that such a keylayout for iOS can be created,as long as the system can display CDM’s correctly, but am not sure, I would like to test it effectively.

[Tom Gewecke]

> On Jun 18, 2017, at 7:04 AM, Sorin Paliga <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> with iOS 11 coming soon and iPad Pro running a seemingly genuine pro OS, as iOS seems to be, purchasing an iPad Pro may be tempting.

Some info that may be useful:

+There’s no difference between the language capabilities of the iphone, ipad mini, ipad, ipad pro. They all use the same iOS, and it hasn’t changed much in this area for the last 3 years.

+There’s still no way for ordinary users to make or install custom keyboards for iOS. You have to get them by downloading and installing an app from the App Store. (The Custom Keypad app you mentioned is for controlling a separate computer from your ipad via VNC).

+Even custom keyboards from the app store do not yet have layouts for hardware keyboards, in case using one of those with the ipad is desired.

I think there may be some existing keyboards which do a lot of what you need. I’ll try mine and send info in a future message.

[Sorin Paliga]

> On 18 Jun 2017, at 16:06, Tom Gewecke <thge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> On Jun 18, 2017, at 7:04 AM, Sorin Paliga <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> with iOS 11 coming soon and iPad Pro running a seemingly genuine pro OS, as iOS seems to be, purchasing an iPad Pro may be tempting.
>
> Some info that may be useful:
>
> +There’s no difference between the language capabilities of the iphone, ipad mini, ipad, ipad pro. They all use the same iOS, and it hasn’t changed much in this area for the last 3 years.

Of course, I just said that an iPad (pro or not) may become usable with the upcoming iOS 11

>
> +There’s still no way for ordinary users to make or install custom keyboards for iOS. You have to get them by downloading and installing an app from the App Store. (The Custom Keypad app you mentioned is for controlling a separate computer from your ipad via VNC).

That is what I am looking for

>
> +Even custom keyboards from the app store do not yet have layouts for hardware keyboards, in case using one of those with the ipad is desired.
>
> I think there may be some existing keyboards which do a lot of what you need. I’ll try mine and send info in a future message.
>

[Gé van Gasteren]

Sorin, I’m not familiar with iOS, but I think what Tom means is that custom keyboard layouts there only work within the app they were packaged with, that is: the app developer has to create and include it.

In other words, custom keyboard layouts are not available system-wide – they can only be used inside the app containing them.

An obvious example would be a word processing app with one or more special keyboard layouts built in, and your best hope currently might be to find such an app that allows editing its keyboard layout or defining a new one.

On 18 June 2017 at 15:13, Sorin Paliga <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 18 Jun 2017, at 16:06, Tom Gewecke <thge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> On Jun 18, 2017, at 7:04 AM, Sorin Paliga <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> with iOS 11 coming soon and iPad Pro running a seemingly genuine pro OS, as iOS seems to be, purchasing an iPad Pro may be tempting.
>
> Some info that may be useful:
>
> +There’s no difference between the language capabilities of the iphone, ipad mini, ipad, ipad pro.  They all use the same iOS, and it hasn’t changed much in this area for the last 3 years.
Of course, I just said that an iPad (pro or not) may become usable with the upcoming iOS 11
>
> +There’s still no way for ordinary users to make or install custom keyboards for iOS.  You have to get them by downloading and installing an app from the App Store.  (The Custom Keypad app you mentioned is for controlling a separate computer from your ipad via VNC).
That is what I am looking for

>
> +Even custom keyboards from the app store do not yet have layouts for hardware keyboards, in case using one of those with the ipad is desired.
>
> I think there may be some existing keyboards which do a lot of what you need.  I’ll try mine and send info in a future message.
>
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[Sorin Paliga]

Well, this is what it seems to be. So far, iOS has been the main impediment in creating pro apps. iPad Pro’s cannot be truly be so because of iOS, not because of hardware config. iOS 11 seems to change the course towards a genuine pro OS, and that is why I am trying to dig it deeper. For the overwhelming majority of users, these are insignifiant details, for me they are crucial if I decide to switch to iOS. 

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[Tom Gewecke]

On Jun 18, 2017, at 9:37 AM, Gé van Gasteren <gevang...@gmail.com> wrote:

In other words, custom keyboard layouts are not available system-wide – they can only be used inside the app containing them.

No, since iOS 8 they *are* available system wide, but you have to install and app to get them onto the device.

[Tom Gewecke]

> On Jun 18, 2017, at 10:18 AM, Sorin Paliga <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> iOS 11 seems to change the course towards a genuine pro OS

I am curious what see in iOS 11 that makes it so much more «pro"

[Tom Gewecke]

> On Jun 18, 2017, at 9:13 AM, Sorin Paliga <sorin....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> On 18 Jun 2017, at 16:06, Tom Gewecke <thge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think there may be some existing keyboards which do a lot of what you need. I’ll try mine and send info in a future message.

I was overly optimistic. I only found one app, UniChar, that seems to let you add any combining diacritic to any character in all other apps (no copy/pasting needed).

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unichar-unicode-character-keyboard/id880811847?mt=8

[Sorin Paliga]

I am curious, too. One of my friends, a good designer, says at least in the field of graphics-design, iPad Pro + stylus offers genuine pro features with apps like Affinity Photo (Affinity Design reportedly coming soon) and ProCreate. The new Pages for iOS has also added the function missing in macOS too, i.e. text link, a very good feature, which makes Pages a good app again (it was, but this feature was abandoned in v. 5, seemingly because it was not yet implemented in the iOS version). 

Otherwise, I am rather pessimistic, word processing has been poorly manageable in iOS, especially with features I mentioned, but there even simple things difficult to use, e.g. non-braking hyphen for Romanian, where it has a high occurrence. 

Sorin Paliga

sorin....@lls.unibuc.ro
sorin_...@icloud.com
sorin....@gmail.com

https://unibuc.academia.edu/SPaliga
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