I know that some time ago, the Keyman mobile app added a way to vertically stretch the keyboard. This is a crucial feature for our teams, since we need to have 4 rows of characters.
It seems this feature does not exist for Keyboard App Builder. Am I wrong? Can it / Will it ever be added?
It’s not clear to me where you are encountering the problem. Usually a person would use Keyman Developer to create the keyboard, then use Keyman App Builder to package the keyboard for distribution. (Alternatively one could install Keyman and then load the keyboard.)
When you talk about “4 rows of characters” do you mean 4 rows including the row with the space bar? or 4 rows above the row with the space bar? Generally we recommend the former format for phones and the latter for tablets, but either could be used on either device.
Would you be able to give some more details on what you have for a keyboard layout and what you need to accomplish? Thanks!
I made the keyboard in Keyman Developer and in the picture below you can see a size comparison. When I used the .kmn file as a basis for a Keyboard App Builder app, it comes in this standard size (on the left). When I opened it using the Keyman app, you can use this setting in the Keyman app (shown on the right) to adjust the height.
You can also see what I mean by four character rows, not including the space row. So I suppose you could call it a 5 row keyboard, including the row with space. Do you know whether there is a way to make such a height adjustment in Keyboard App Builder apps?
Thanks for this clear description of the issue. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer to your question, but I hope someone else will!
As far as I know, this feature does not yet exist in KAB. @chrisvire may know more about any implementation plans.
I didn’t even know this was a feature of Keyman keyboards. @Marc how would KAB detect (without parsing the file) to know to give more space for the keyboard? Is there some property of KeymanEngine that we could query?
Thanks,
Chris
The Keyman Engine has this API
https://help.keyman.com/developer/engine/android/17.0/KMManager/applyKeyboardHeight
to set the keyboard height (dp). It would be the same value for all devices though.
An example from the Keyman menu for adjusting the keyboard height:
I’m still waiting impatiently for this stretch/resize feature to be implemented via KAB. As soon as it is, I’ll happily abandon my custom-coded app and submit a KAB app instead.
Note: Even with Darcy’s help, I was never able to get this working properly in my App using KMEA.
@chrisvire , this feature gives the user the ability to vertically stretch or shrink the KB by some percentage to make it more usable. I think it’s just a percentage of the default height.
@Matthew_Lee @Christopher_Fiorello,
If one of you could send me a KAB project (zipped up), then I could try to figure out how to support this in KAB. Please email a link to a download to chris_hubbard@sil.org
Thanks,
Chris
I have sent it, @chrisvire.
