NDS: BLARGH Text Editor

**anomalous_underdog** · April 17th, 2008, 20:04

Originally Posted by Akoi Meexx

Also, I put together an xml file along with old keyboard images as an idea for how one could make additional keyboard plugins. I haven't specified the key positions or sizes in the xml, but just included the tags figuring those should be fairly self-explanatory. Any thoughts or suggestions on it?

I don't want to sound ungrateful but, I'm thinking of not using XML files at all.

I'm gonna use actual script files themselves as the keyboard layout definition (.lua in my case as I've decided to use Lua). What I'll do is, there's a lua table that declares all the keys, where they are on the screen, and a callback function attached to each. When a key is pressed, that callback function gets called, which would normally return a single letter, but this lets me do stuff like making a key output the current date and time, which is what the blank keys on the far left are for (in my program). Its quite similar to the XML file you made actually.

I had originally been thinking each key have its own .png file so users can rearrange the layout on the fly, but maybe one big keyboard .png file may be easier (like in the ones you provided, and besides, its also how I do things currently).

In your QWERTY layout pic, I can see a forward slash "/", but I can't seem to find backslash "\", also tab, bar "|", tilde "~", and backquote "`" (although the last three might not be that important).

I'm also gonna make a "character map" keyboard layout. Its like the Character Map program for Windows, a table of chars including accented letters and those wierd engineering/math symbols.

I might also put in the FITALY layout, I used to use that when my PDA was still working.
http://www.fitaly.com/

Here's some weird page I found about alternative keyboard layouts (its in Japanese though, I just look at the pictures):
http://pitecan.com/articles/HIS/Inpu...putsurvey.html
http://mrl.nyu.edu/projects/quikwriting/Quikwrite2.html

**Akoi Meexx** · April 18th, 2008, 02:45

Nothing ungrateful about that. Good to hear your take on how you'd implement it, really.

**antiaverage** · April 23rd, 2008, 17:57

I'm not sure a character map is the best way to input foreign characters. Have you looked into how Apple uses the option key for this? Also, why FITALY instead of QUONG? It seems FITALY is optimized for single presses whereas QUONG is optimized for strokes as desired by the creator of HexInput.

**Akoi Meexx** · April 23rd, 2008, 19:09

Originally Posted by antiaverage

I'm not sure a character map is the best way to input foreign characters. Have you looked into how Apple uses the option key for this? Also, why FITALY instead of QUONG? It seems FITALY is optimized for single presses whereas QUONG is optimized for strokes as desired by the creator of HexInput.

I thought that he meant in addition to QUONG, which is already in use here?

**antiaverage** · April 24th, 2008, 02:16

Originally Posted by Akoi Meexx

I thought that he meant in addition to QUONG, which is already in use here?

As an addition that makes perfect sense. Sorry about that. I'm still curious about the foreign characters, though. I'd prefer option-key style input over a character map.

Also, turns out OPTI is 5% faster than FITALY, but very similar in layout. You may want to consider it instead:

http://www.yorku.ca/mack/CHI99a.html

**anomalous_underdog** · April 28th, 2008, 16:45

Originally Posted by antiaverage

Also, turns out OPTI is 5% faster than FITALY, but very similar in layout. You may want to consider it instead:

http://www.yorku.ca/mack/CHI99a.html

hey, thanks a lot for pointing that out, FITALY is commercially owned, so I was having doubts whether I should include it in my program or not.

since OPTI seems to be an academic research paper, its creators may be more willing to let other people use it.

I'm also thinking of adding Quikwrite. http://mrl.nyu.edu/projects/quikwriting/Quikwrite2.html

Originally Posted by antiaverage

I'm still curious about the foreign characters, though. I'd prefer option-key style input over a character map.

Yes, I'm thinking about it too. I'm only planning on putting the character map option so users can input any conceivable character allowed in unicode (but perhaps not kanji or other similar foreign language letters. I heard their letters are something like a million or more in total).

as for typing of foreign letters in daily usage, I'm still thinking about it.

**anomalous_underdog** · April 28th, 2008, 17:22

revision 97 released!

nds file:
http://dl.sharesource.org/blarghtext...or.nds.r97.zip

source code:
http://dl.sharesource.org/blarghtext...or.src.r97.zip

notes:

a few bugfixes, although there are still a handful of bugs
after typing an amount of text, press the bottom-left hex. it'll print some info about the lines of text currently displayed. those are the line data. I'm about to refactor some of the text editing code to make use of that data

**anomalous_underdog** · May 4th, 2008, 20:19

revision 103 released!

nds file:
http://dl.sharesource.org/blarghtext...ditor.r103.zip
http://www.zshare.net/download/11528400d5b3077e/

source code:
http://dl.sharesource.org/blarghtext...r.src.r103.zip

notes:

bugfixes. text editing should have no bugs now
i'm currently working on implementing proper word-wrapping, its incomplete, so I didn't include it in the release