Fullscreen keyboard

[Phantom]

Does any of the WinCE guru's know whether or not it would be possible to use the full-screen keyboard (or something similar, perhaps a portrait version of the AliCE keyboard) as a real input method, that can be used from other apps? Of course, this would mean that the keyboard is a translucent overlay and so on... Pretty tricky, I think.<br><br>Anyway, if this would be possible, this would be a very interesting app, wich could very easily be sold. So if anyone is interested in teaming up with me to do this... Let me know.

[Luciano U. Werner]

Jacco, tell me something: how many projects can you run at the same time? Do you ever sleep?

[Paul]

you mean you'rte going to make a new keyboard? brilliant. <br><br>in vb i'd use api to do a sendkeys thingie so it'd send the click to the current window. if thats what you mean. i assume you can do that through c++ in wince.<br><br>you're some kind of playboy millionaire arent you.

[cryo]

hmm... well, it doesnt sound that hard, but im interested anyway Email me <br><br>here<br><br>to talk about it.<br><br>cryo

[Matt Keys]

you are talking about adding a new keyboard that could be used in every program..., well it must be possible because fitaly and calligrapher do it.

[cryo]

yeah, it is possible and i know how to do it. Even if i will have to refresh my COM skills a lil' bit <br><br>cryo

[Digby]

I'm not clear on why you would need COM.  Use keybd_event() and be done with it.<br><br>

[cryo]

well, you need COM to replace the default system input panel with your custom one. you create a inprocess COM dll that exposes some specific interfaces and poke around in the registry and voilá. the default system input panel is gone and your custom one is displayed instead.<br><br>cryo<br>

[superman]

Sounds to me like it would have to be more like transcriber and actually display stuff ( the keys; it sounded like you were just talking about an input panel ) over what's already in the window. It wouldn't just be making a new input panel. This is possible, but would take some real effort. It definitely would sell...

[cryo]

<br>what i think the app should do is just the same as the system input panel, but showing a fullscreen, semi-transparent keyboard instead.<br><br>Jacco, are you still up to it? ill start with the COM stuff, contact me on ICQ later today.<br><br>cryo<br>

[Phantom]

Cryo, yeah, I'm still interested, of course, I just happen to sleep when you guys are awake. I live in Europe. Quite inconvenient for a coder. Anyway, I know it's possible to add input methods, that's not what I'm worried about. The problem is the fact that this particular keyboard is cool because it's fullscreen, and THUS translucent. I wonder if WinCE can cope with that. See the problem? But if this is possible, we have a winner.

[cryo]

im closer to you than you think (.de)<br><br>anyway, these 2 possibilities come to my mind for the translucent thing. <br><br>1) we do it by hand, e.g. we get the contents of the screen and put our keyboard graphics over it with alpha-blending.<br><br>2) we write a new display driver, which of course could then also do the landscape subpixel stuff <br><br>for number 2, which is the cooler version, we need platform builder. I have a demo licence for it, but the real one is too expensive (app. $2700).<br><br>for number 1 it might be too slow. but hey, we can optimize, can we? <br><br>what do you think?<br><br>cryo<br><br>

[Phantom]

The problem with 1 is that the keyboard would flicker. After all, we are changing the contents of the screen by typing (that's the idea:) ), so we need to re-get the screen all the time...<br><br>Problem with two is that a display driver is a heavy piece of equipment. The Platform stuff is not a problem; I work for a company that has a MS-Library-whatever subscription. I can get all the CD's you need. Don't tell Matt, or he will ban me for warez activities.

[cryo]

for 1 we could try to do clipping to restrict the redrawing of the screen to the relevant portions, but i dont know to what extent that would really help.<br><br>for 2 i have the cds myself, what i dont have is a license for distributing software done with that stuff. but we should first concentrate on getting it to work first <br><br>so which one do we choose? ill check out choice 1 just to see how slow and flickering it is <br><br>cryo <br>