Long keypress to enter accents?

[Neelix]

I've recently been using my sister's old phone which has a built in qwerty keyboard as if it it were a miniature android tablet. (without a sim card) I think the LCD cable on it is dying though (the screen keeps loosing power) which makes it somewhat less useful.

One of the things I was doing with it was to use the duolingo app to learn French, so since the phone was giving me so much trouble I figured I'd give duolingo's web based system a go in Pale Moon on the Pandora.

By switching to full screen mode, zooming out a bit and using either headphones or external speakers I was able to get it working pretty well, so far so good.   Just one problem, that many of you are already familiar with, entering accents on the Pandora is a right royal pain in the a**! (and an unfortunate side effect of zooming out to fit everything on the screen is that you can't make out the accents on duolingo's on-screen buttons for the purpose.)

Now under android I've gotten pretty used to using a long press on the phone's keyboard to bring up a popup for accent selection, (e.g.  Holding down "a" gives me access to á,â,à etc.) and I figured, surely there must be a similar solution for linux that could be implemented on the Pandora.  So far I haven't found one though. 

So my question is,  does anyone know of  any such program (preferably FOSS) that already exists and could be easily ported to the pandora?

- Neelix

 

[Saber]

It would be splendid to have this on the Pyra. Define which accents pop-up and which don't for each vowel depending on the user's native language.

 

[comradekingu]

Considering this problem for the pyra keyboard, with the help of http://www.brianhetrick.com/kb/and community,

thus far ive arrived at the AltGr being regular third modifier, and using the Ctrl+Alt as a invoker of dead-keys.

I suppose thats mostly the same as a compose key, but that is a more direct way. I had it planned like that, but F-keys on the numbers proved more popular and valid than F-keys on the QWERTY row.

The problem with longpress is that it enters an abrupt pause for every accent. Its second-rate, and makes the user feel second rate. Its superior to none though.

From the US international keyboard link above it seems space+ is a standard modifier. Not quite sure how though, mabye its space+aaa to get à or something.

 

[Saber]

Think of this as an option more for letters or symbols you don't type often than those on your daily go to list.

 

[FBnil]

iBus and SCIM should be available on the software repositories for the Pyra version of Linux.

Then, there are plugins that determine the input method (in case of chinese, you can have a GUI popup), same for hebrew. Not sure if there are for accented characters.. testing in my vm

 

[Neelix]

Considering this problem for the pyra keyboard, with the help of http://www.brianhetrick.com/kb/and community,


thus far ive arrived at the AltGr being regular third modifier, and using the Ctrl+Alt as a invoker of dead-keys.


I suppose thats mostly the same as a compose key, but that is a more direct way. I had it planned like that, but F-keys on the numbers proved more popular and valid than F-keys on the QWERTY row.


The problem with longpress is that it enters an abrupt pause for every accent. Its second-rate, and makes the user feel second rate. Its superior to none though.


From the US international keyboard link above it seems space+ is a standard modifier. Not quite sure how though, mabye its space+aaa to get à or something.

Keyboard layout discussion for the Pyra is off-topic in this thread. What I'm interested in is software solutions that can be implemented on the Pandora. I would also note that while the long-press solution does have that downside it also seems to have the advantage of being standard on Android, iOS and more recent versions of Mac-OS, (from what I've gathered) so it would be a familiar and acceptable method of entering such characters to many. To my mind that means it would make sense to implement such a system on both devices as an optional alternative to direct keyboard entry via a compose key, no matter how that ends up being implemented on the Pyra.

iBus and SCIM should be available on the software repositories for the Pyra version of Linux.


Then, there are plugins that determine the input method (in case of chinese, you can have a GUI popup), same for hebrew. Not sure if there are for accented characters.. testing in my vm

That sounds promising. Please let me know if you come up with anything useful.


I did find a Javascript implementation here, (released under the MIT License) but it doesn't seem to be immediately useful in it's current form as it's done as a jquery plugin. I'm wondering if it could be adapted into a Firefox / Pale Moon extension, but I'm unfamiliar with jquery and I don't know what would need to be done to do so. I also wonder if it could be combined with something like xulrunner to make a standalone systray app for system-wide use.


- Neelix

 

[Klumpen]

It would be splendid to have this on the Pyra. Define which accents pop-up and which don't for each vowel depending on the user's native language.

Many people are writing in several languages, so I'd like to have the full european/scandinavian/polish/etc... language spectrum available, with Asian sets and others optional as extensions.

 

[_wb_]

Interesting idea, Neelix.

Also: in the current version of SuperZaxxon, Shift-Enter as compose key no longer works in LibreOffice. This is very annoying. Does anyone know how to fix that?

 

[Neelix]

Interesting idea, Neelix.

Also: in the current version of SuperZaxxon, Shift-Enter as compose key no longer works in LibreOffice. This is very annoying. Does anyone know how to fix that?

Thanks

I just upgraded my OS to the latest SZ a couple of days ago.   I just now tried LibreOffice Writer though and shift-enter to compose is still working just fine there.

- Neelix

 

[Saber]

It would be splendid to have this on the Pyra. Define which accents pop-up and which don't for each vowel depending on the user's native language.

Many people are writing in several languages, so I'd like to have the full european/scandinavian/polish/etc... language spectrum available, with Asian sets and others optional as extensions.

Post your concrete suggestions then on how to manage such a feat(with the handheld's keyboard). 

 

[Klumpen]

It would be splendid to have this on the Pyra. Define which accents pop-up and which don't for each vowel depending on the user's native language.

 
Many people are writing in several languages, so I'd like to have the full european/scandinavian/polish/etc... language spectrum available, with Asian sets and others optional as extensions.

Post your concrete suggestions then on how to manage such a feat(with the handheld's keyboard). 

See first post. Just hold an select.

 

[Saber]

It would be splendid to have this on the Pyra. Define which accents pop-up and which don't for each vowel depending on the user's native language.

 
Many people are writing in several languages, so I'd like to have the full european/scandinavian/polish/etc... language spectrum available, with Asian sets and others optional as extensions.

Post your concrete suggestions then on how to manage such a feat(with the handheld's keyboard). 

See first post. Just hold an select.

What's pressed with Control? Unlike a full keyboard, nearly all the symbols on the handheld are under Fn and many of the letters are Control shortcuts in numerous programs. This leaves us with having to hold a Shift or an Alt key with it. Not saying we can't do it that way, but I like how it's done accordingly here. 

 

[Neelix]

Perhaps you should reread the first post as suggested.    The whole point is to avoid using Ctrl, or fn altogether.   You would just hold down the letter key you want accented  until a popup appears allowing you to select which accent you want.    So if you want "é" you would hit e (without a modifier) but hold it for a half a second or so (ideally the hold duration would be user configurable)   until a popup appears on the screen offering ("é, ë, è, ê") and then you would choose which of those you want, and it would be automatically entered into the text field.

If you number the options in the popup you would be able to reduce most accented character entry to two unmodified keystrokes, (letter to be accented, then number of the accent selection)   or to a key + touchscreen selection combination.  It would still break the flow of typing somewhat due to the necessary delay factor in holding down a key,  but It's actually a lot less intrusive than "shift+enter, fn+symbol, letter) especially if you haven't memorised the positions of the "dead-key" symbols.

- Neelix

 

[Saber]

Perhaps you should reread the first post as suggested.    The whole point is to avoid using Ctrl, or fn altogether.   You would just hold down the letter key you want accented  until a popup appears allowing you to select which accent you want.    So if you want "é" you would hit e (without a modifier) but hold it for a half a second or so (ideally the hold duration would be user configurable)   until a popup appears on the screen offering ("é, ë, è, ê") and then you would choose which of those you want, and it would be automatically entered into the text field.

If you number the options in the popup you would be able to reduce most accented character entry to two unmodified keystrokes, (letter to be accented, then number of the accent selection)   or to a key + touchscreen selection combination.  It would still break the flow of typing somewhat due to the necessary delay factor in holding down a key,  but It's actually a lot less intrusive than "shift+enter, fn+symbol, letter) especially if you haven't memorised the positions of the "dead-key" symbols.

- Neelix

Yes, which is why I had advocated your idea earlier in this thread, above, as well. :rolleyes:     

 

[TrashyMG]

Hopefully this could be disabled for gaming.. I can just vision a weird issue with games that require you to hold a key for a length of time.

 

[moxie]

That sounds like an interesting alternative for those who like that sort of thing. My personal experience is that it is rather hopeless to do that if you're writing in a language that uses these kind of characters with any frequency. It probably works well if you're only writing an accent here or there, but when you go like "Vårt ök till häst rymde längs Gålmöravägen! Månne hästen är över ån än?", then the waiting becomes extremely stressful. But then again, usually the number of commonly used accented characters is limited, so it is quite simple to put them on an easily learned fn+key-combo and use the press-and-wait method for more uncommon things.

 

[benoitb]

Sound like a good idea if you are learning the language, no need to learn azerty for the occasional french input needs.

 

[Neelix]

Hopefully this could be disabled for gaming.. I can just vision a weird issue with games that require you to hold a key for a length of time.

Indeed.  I was envisioning a systray app for any system wide implementation, that you could enable or disable as needed.  (or perhaps it could come with an installable configbutton plugin to manage that) 

- Neelix

 

[dimag0g]

I did find a Javascript implementation here, (released under the MIT License) but it doesn't seem to be immediately useful in it's current form as it's done as a jquery plugin. I'm wondering if it could be adapted into a Firefox / Pale Moon extension, but I'm unfamiliar with jquery and I don't know what would need to be done to do so. I also wonder if it could be combined with something like xulrunner to make a standalone systray app for system-wide use.

XUL-based app would probably take lots of memory. On the other hand, PaleMoon extension would be viable, since the browser already has XUL.