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Keyboard with Macros

Blrfl

Well-Known Member
Jan 7, 2010
108
20
The 'Burbs of Washington, DC
Does anyone know of a replacement virtual keyboard that does macros? I'd like to have a quick and easy way to input one of a dozen or so canned strings of text like my email address. I've looked at a bunch, and none of them seem to have this feature.

While I'm kvetching about keyboards, another nice-to-have would be one that doesn't submit characters that haven't been "fully" entered. By that I mean that if I go to enter an @, the keyboard doesn't slip in the character underneath it followed by a backspace and then the @. Kinda makes things difficult in an SSH session when running a program that takes single-character commands.

Thanks!

--Mark
 
Does anyone know of a replacement virtual keyboard that does macros? I'd like to have a quick and easy way to input one of a dozen or so canned strings of text like my email address. I've looked at a bunch, and none of them seem to have this feature.

SlideIT does that.

While I'm kvetching about keyboards, another nice-to-have would be one that doesn't submit characters that haven't been "fully" entered. By that I mean that if I go to enter an @, the keyboard doesn't slip in the character underneath it followed by a backspace and then the @. Kinda makes things difficult in an SSH session when running a program that takes single-character commands.

Sorry, I didn't follow this at all. What do you mean "underneath it"?
 
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SlideIT does that.

Thanks for the tip. I gave it a shot, and while it does have that feature, it has some problems of its own, like making it impossible to capitalize a letter in the middle of a word. That means I can't type words like vxWorks or iPod.

I think I'm going to have to make a list of the keyboards available in the market and try them out one at a time until find one that works for me.

Sorry, I didn't follow this at all. What do you mean "underneath it"?

I should have been a little clearer; this is a problem specific to the HTC keyboard. When you're in alphabetic mode, each key can be long-pressed to get at additional characters without having to switch modes. (Here's a picture.) When you go to type an @, for example, you press and hold the S key, and a set of additional choices pops up (@, German eszett and an S with an acute accent, cedilla or hacek). Releasing the S key inputs the @, or you can select one of the other characters.

When you first tap the key, whatever is receiving the input sees the key's "main" character, and after selecting one of the alternate characters, it sees a backspace and the alternate. (In other words, when I want to input an @, the application sees S-Backspace-@.) That works fine in a text box, but when running a program like ConnectBot, which relays each keystroke across the wire to a program running somewhere else that may be expecting single characters as input. (I have just that situation, which is why I brought it up.)

--Mark
 
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Thanks for the tip. I gave it a shot, and while it does have that feature, it has some problems of its own, like making it impossible to capitalize a letter in the middle of a word. That means I can't type words like vxWorks or iPod.

Well, it's kind of kludgy, but there is a way. If you do anything that makes SlideIT "forget" that it's in the middle of a word, it lets you use the shift key again. Probably the easiest is just to toggle in and out of the symbols page, so typing "iPod" would be 'i', '12@', 'Abc', shift, 'p', 'o', 'd'. That shouldn't be necessary, and I think I'll probably report the inability to type "camel-case" words as a bug, but in the meantime I like SlideIT enough that I'm willing to put up with it.

I should have been a little clearer; this is a problem specific to the HTC keyboard. When you're in alphabetic mode, each key can be long-pressed to get at additional characters without having to switch modes. (Here's a picture.) When you go to type an @, for example, you press and hold the S key, and a set of additional choices pops up (@, German eszett and an S with an acute accent, cedilla or hacek). Releasing the S key inputs the @, or you can select one of the other characters.

When you first tap the key, whatever is receiving the input sees the key's "main" character, and after selecting one of the alternate characters, it sees a backspace and the alternate. (In other words, when I want to input an @, the application sees S-Backspace-@.) That works fine in a text box, but when running a program like ConnectBot, which relays each keystroke across the wire to a program running somewhere else that may be expecting single characters as input. (I have just that situation, which is why I brought it up.)

Thanks for the explanation. I haven't used the HTC keyboard, but I can certainly see how that would be a problem.
 
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