We have just published Keyman 14.0.276, which has a significant new feature for new Android users!
When you search for a keyboard on the Keyman website, you can now install both Keyman and that keyboard together through the Play Store. No need to come back and search for the keyboard again after installing Keyman.
For example, say you want to install the GFF Amharic keyboard from keyman.com:
So here’s a wild idea… what if a QR code represented the binary of a .kmx file? Could a phone with the Keyman app already installed, add a new keyboard without an internet connection?
Some keyboards should be small enough where a single QR encoding would be possible. Maybe its more than just the .kmx file necessary, but you get the general idea
This has been suggested before. Unfortunately, the majority of keyboards are larger than the 4KB maximum of a QR code which would limit this unacceptably.
I should also say, the user still has to install Keyman before they could scan an offline binary kmx QR Code, so not sure we are winning much with an offline QR Code strategy anyway!
@Ron_Lockwood, can you give some more detail on the steps you took, version of Android, keyboard you tried with? This should work for any keyboard on the Keyman website; the way the keyboard install operates depends on whether you have Keyman installed already or not.
@Marc I tried it with Balochi Phonetic after I had uninstalled Keyman on my Android Tablet (Android 7). I got Keyman, but the Balochi keyboard wasn’t installed. Thanks for taking a look.
Hmm, I’m guessing the version of the Play Store app on your Android 7 tablet is too old to support the Google Play Store Install Referrer API. It requires a minimum Play Store version of 8.3.73. You can check the version number in Settings / Apps.
Over time that issue will go away as users move to newer Android versions, and unfortunately we cannot reliably detect the version of the device prior to install, but while not ideal, the fallback process may help those users who are stuck on older devices. Did you find the fallback process okay?
Ok. That makes sense. I guess the fallback process was ok, but it was not obvious that my Balochi keyboard didn’t get installed until I checked. Probably nothing you can do about it.