Remember that conceptually, Keyman sees it an additional key called T_262_62, which can be combined with Shift, Ctrl and Alt just like any other key.
Read the article I linked above. Testing on desktop using the method described, you can test longpress and every feature of the touch keyboard; it looks and functions the same as on a phone or tablet. It’s still good to test on a phone or tablet for the “real feel” of a touch keyboard as opposed to simulating it with the mouse, but for development and testing, it’s fantastic on a desktop.
This was a design decision based on the size of the display. On phones, you obscure so much of the keyboard with your finger that showing the base key cap on the long press is a good visual hint. On tablet-sized devices, this feedback isn’t needed. There’s no way to change that functionality in the current release of Keyman.
Thanks for the info.
Sorry I didn’t notice that the text was a link. I will check it out although the Chromebooks works quite well and allows me to use the touchscreen.
I am working with a missionary who wants to know if there is a way to double tap the shift key and get a caps lock. Told him I don’t see how but that I would ask.
Thanks again,
Lee Partridge
Thanks, I didn’t know of any way to do that.
I tried the desktop testing and remembered why I had forgot about it. I tried it on both Linux and MS Windows. The keyboard works fine, but the longpress gives me the right-click mouse menu.
Are you using Chrome? Holding the left mouse button? Do you have non-default configuration for your mouse buttons? We don’t see that behaviour with the Chrome mobile emulator (I am running “version 74.0.3729.157 (Official Build) (64-bit)” on Windows 10 here).
I am using the latest version of Google Chrome in both Linux Mint and MS Windows 10. I tried both mouse buttons with the same results. I normally use the right button since I use the mouse with my left hand.
I don’t normally use Firefox because of their political leanings, but I did try it and it doesn’t work at all as far as long-press.
I did get the two tap Caps Lock to work today, however, but I had to uninstall and reinstall Keyman on my phone many times.
I don’t know what to say about the browser testing but it really isn’t that big of a deal since I am working on a little web server running on a Raspberry Pi that I can use to serve the .kmp file to my phone.
I switched the mouse buttons for a right-hand user and tried that both in Linux Mint and MS Windows 10. In MS Windows 10 when I long-press with the left mouse button, what right-hand people would normally use, nothing happens until I release
the mouse button. Upon releasing the button I get the right-click context menu. I can not perform a right mouse button long-press since I immediately get the context menu.
In Linux Mint the results are not the same. When I long-press with the left mouse button, there is a pause, then the right-click context menu appears. If you don’t wait out the pause and release the mouse button the keycap is displayed. The right mouse
button produces the context menu immediately as it does in MS Windows 10.
I switched my mouse back to left-handed, normal for me, and performed the above and got the exact same results.
With MS Windows 10 I am using Google Chrome Version 74.0.3729.169 (Official Build) (64-bit) .
With Linux Mint 19.1 I am using Google Chrome Version 71.0.3578.80 (Official Build) (64-bit).
My Chromebook which is using Google Chrome Version 74.0.3729.159 (Official Build) (64-bit)
worked exactly like Linux Mint when I tried the long press.
I don’t know what is causing that behaviour – a long-press with the left mouse button should never show the context menu on Windows. Seems to me there may be some other mouse software that’s overriding the default Windows behaviour?
I have never used Linux Mint so I cannot comment on that.
I just tried on my Chromebook and a long mouse click on the touch layout in the test page, when using the mobile emulation mode, worked exactly as expected – it showed the long-press menu.
So I am at a loss to explain what is going on with your computers.
Thanks for getting back to me. Sorry, I didn’t get back to you earlier, but I have been working on the server.
I didn’t install any special software for the mouse, unless MS windows did in the background.
With the Chromebook, I am not using a mouse, just the touchpad. Keyman and the keyboard do work on the Chromebook as an Android app but only with the touch screen for long press.
I know you said you have not used Linux MInt, but, I was thinking, if you are familiar with Wasta Linux then you are familiar with Linux Mint. They both use Ubuntu for their base Linux and Cinnamon is the most used desktop version on both distros.
I know SIL supports both Ubuntu and Wasta. http://packages.sil.org/
I didn’t think of that this morning when I wrote you.
I may have a clue to why the testing within the browser is not working. I have been frustrated with testing with my phone since it takes so long to remove Keyman, reboot the phone, reinstall Keyman, etc after each change I make. So, I have attempted
to get the browser testing working and trying to figure it out. The missionary wrote and said he could not use the keyboard as is since the buttons are too small, could I strip it down? So, I did, down to just the letters on the default layer with 4 other
layers for other characters. In trying to test this with the browser I noticed that it was displaying a full keyboard with numbers, letters and punctuation, not the touch-screen keyboard I had designed. I don’t know if that helps with the problem of not getting
the long-press menus or not. This is what I see in the browser:
Also, the missionary wrote me today with this question. I thought I saw somewhere that this could be shut off, but I can’t find it now:
I wonder if you can help me with a glitch in Keyman. When I want to switch out of the Landuma keyboard, tapping the globe, Keyman often first wants to check for keyboard
updates. The problem with that is our Internet connection is so slow that this can take a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, the phone won’t respond; I can’t do anything else with it till Keyman finally learns what it wants from the Internet. I checked the Keyman
settings, but I didn’t see where I can disable the auto update feature. Do you know how I can tell Keyman to wait for me to tell it to check for updates?
Got it! Yes, after selecting the iPhone layout in the Chrome Device Toolbar, you need to press F5 or the Refresh button to reload the page. Then you’ll get the touch mode. (Sorry if the documentation was unclear).
This is on our agenda to resolve. I agree it’s awful – version 12 should move the update checking out of that menu and into the app configuration along with a rework of how the keyboard installation and management is done. (@darcy can you confirm that the update check only happens in the setup menus now and not in the keyboard switcher?)
I get the same results on my phones when I try to access the url. I have left it sit and it will literally sit there and scroll all day with no results. I tried several iPhones with the f5.
Sure, I have attached the .kmn and the layout file.
Also, I am having a real problem getting the keyboard to update on my newest phone. I remove the keyboard, delete the download file, remove Keyman, shut down the phone, then start up the phone, then reinstall Keyman. And guess what the landuma keyboard
is installed in Keyman. It is an old landuma keyboard before I stripped out all the punctuation. I have tried this several times with the same results.
The issue is that the fontsize declaration in your .keyman-touch-layout file doesn’t include units. Keyman is not expecting this. To fix it, change the line (line #3253 in the version you sent me) to include the “px” units:
"fontsize": "12px",
Keyman should be more robust in handling this so we will make a fix for this in the future.
I don’t think that relates to the issues you are having installing and uninstalling the keyboard. I don’t see any way that the keyboard could be remaining on your device once you uninstall the app?
In the Keyman Developer, I had changed the fontsize to 1em, in trying to get the characters larger, since I sent you the file. But that didn’t work either. So as you suggested, I took out the “fontsize”: “1em”, and replaced it with “fontsize”:
“12px”, and that works in the browser test page.
I don’t get the big fuzzy dot in Google Chrome on MS win10 but it works correctly in Google Chrome on Linux Mint.
On my old test phone with Android version 6.0, I can install the keyboard .kmp file directly from a download off of my web server.
On my present phone with Android version 8.1.0 I have to download the .kmp from my server, then open the file manager and install it from there. At least I didn’t have to uninstall Keyman and reinstall
it. This is also the way I have to install it on my Chromebook with Android.
I believe I should be able to install it from the test page in Google Chrome but nothing happens when I click Add keyboard to Keyman for Android. I tried this on all three Android devices.
Just adding that px to the fontsize made a vast difference. That setting in Keyman Developer can cause lots of problems.
