Enhancement: Localized compact 5-row layouts

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi,

i just love Hacker's Keyboard, for lots of reasons. One of them is compact 
5-row layout, which makes typing in portrait mode much more convenient. It is 
sad, that this great feature only available for EN layout. I really miss it for 
other languages as well. 

Could you please make compact 5-row layouts available for other languages? I'd 
be happy to help, just don't know where to start.

Thanks!

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [email protected] on 6 Jun 2015 at 12:24

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I would like to support this also, but the current way it's implemented is a 
hack and not well scalable. Overall this goes back to the long-neglected 
https://code.google.com/p/hackerskeyboard/issues/detail?id=13 .

Going forward, I want to decouple languages and layouts. Basically, users can 
create one or more "configs", where a config selects a portrait-mode layout, a 
landscape-mode layout, and an input language (for dictionaries and alt chars). 
The UI would provide separate actions for "next config with the same language" 
(replacing the 4-row/compact/full switch action) and "next config with 
different language" (swipe on space bar or language switch actions).

In this model, there could potentially be any number of layouts for a given 
language. By default, the config selector would only offer layouts matching the 
selected language, but this could be overridden - if someone wants German 
dictionary with a US QWERTY layout, that should be possible.

Original comment by [email protected] on 9 Jun 2015 at 5:47

• Changed state: Accepted

[AntonGut]

Hi Klaus,

I see you just recently closed a similar issue #682 without resolution.

Still, over 3 years ago you had some plan to potentially implement the compact 5-row for other languages. Is it abandoned? Is there anything that can be done by someone else than you?

Is there any progress on issue #13?

I would appreciate any feedback!

[klausw]

I had closed #682 since the non-internationalization is currently the expected behavior.

I don't have active plans for a major change such as needed for #13. There are two ways to internationalize the compact 5-row keyboard. You could add language-specific altchars via the XML file, this works OK for languages that are OK with a QWERTY layout and just want some additional long-press characters.

For a fully custom keyboard that isn't QWERTY, you'd need to make a copy of https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard/blob/master/app/src/main/res/xml/kbd_compact.xml into the xml-uk/ directory and edit the layout to match your language. This is kind of tedious, and gets ugly for non-QWERTY since you basically need to hardcode altchars, you can't just add an alternates_for_X entry for an X key that isn't part of the default layout. Nobody has done that so far, and I haven't been encouraging it since it would make future refactorings harder. At this point, since those refactorings are unlikely, I'd be open to contributed compact layouts.

[AntonGut]

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply! I might find some time to look into that. I don't expect hardcoding altchars would be too bad for one language.
Just to clarify: The only change needed to the code is a custom "kbd_compact.xml", everything else is already there?
And another thing. I am familiar with coding and can imagine what changes would be needed to the code to make it work even if I don't understand every line (yet). I would like to be able to test my changes though, and I have never done any coding/compiling for android before. Can you point me in the right direction to a suitable build environment? Either on linux or windows. Doesn't need to be a manual, obviously. But a short list of the tools you use would help me a lot.

[klausw]

There's also a kbd_compact_fn.xml, but you can keep that unmodified if you're OK with the existing layout for that.

In theory adding the localized kbd_compact.xml should be sufficient to make it work, but this is somewhat uncharted territory since I haven't previously tried localizing this layout.

There's also a layout table in https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard/blob/master/app/src/main/java/org/pocketworkstation/pckeyboard/InputLanguageSelection.java that's autogenerated by a script, but that doesn't currently know about the compact 5-row layout. It should be OK without that, this table is mainly used for showing the available features in the language selection dialog.

Old instructions are in https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard/wiki/AddingNewLayouts , but that isn't entirely up to date. Android Studio and/or Gradle are pretty good about giving warnings if there's an issue with the mapping, for example it detects if you're trying to override a nonexistent string.

[klausw]

I've just updated https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard/wiki/BuildingFromSource , the project is now Android Studio / Gradle compatible.