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A little departure from photography in this post to get a little 'geeky'. I've had my Android Nexus One phone for about a month now and I'm still loving it. One thing that I had to get use to coming from the blackberry is the N1's virtual keyboard. I'd like to be able to type quick messages out one handed using just my thumb to peck at the keyboard but a QWERTY keyboard is not suited for this. Back in my Palm OS days, I used a keyboard layout that was designed for a stylus, and transfers well to one finger typing. The layout is called FITALY and is based on grouping the most common keys in the center of the layout and the least used at the edges with the intent of minimizing the distance your finger has to travel to type out a message.
In looking at the Android marketplace, I found all sorts of alternative keyboards but no FITALY. The original makers of fitaly for the palm still have a webpage but no signs of plans for porting it to Android - So I decided to see how tough it'd be to write my own. After all, Android is supposed to be and open platform and Google gives you all the tools you need to get started writing apps - so let see...
As it turns out, it was amazingly simple, Google even had an example of a virtual QWERTY keyboard in their SDK. The keyboard layout is defined by a simple XML file. So without any programming, I got fitaly running over a lunch break. Now it's pretty basic, but after seeing what's involved I think I'll adapt the layout to one of the more elaborate soft keyboards that are open source projects to take advantage of the predictive text and user dictionary functions they provide. Maybe done by next lunch break?
Anyway, this little exercise cemented my love for the Android OS - I think its going to take over the small device market over the next couple years.
10 comments:
Dude! Code?
Ask and you shall receive watch for a new post with code.
Wow! I also discovered Fitaly in the Palm days, and I was looking for one for my Droid.
Now I have to pull up the SDK and see what's in there for keyboard layouts...
I'm a Fitaly fan too. I still have it on my old Palm T1. Look forward to this!
Mkllshooter, Mettadore, The Bear:
I was waiting for Fitaly to work on a PDA like the Droid appears to be, so I'm game too for the Fitaly.
Is that for free - available?
Thank you.
Alan Kelly
I read this:
http://mkiishooter.blogspot.com/2010/02/dyi-fitaly-keyboard-for-android.html
Is that code available to engage a Fitaly keyboard layout on the N1?
Yes, I have links to the code in another post
But I haven't made any changes in quite sometime, the main code base of the opensource project I based the FITALY layout on now supports layout plugins, so it may be time to give it another go. Although, I'm really liking Grafitti on Android as well as the built in keyboard on 2.2 is much improved.
Wow! More happy, if it could be used Japanease!
I found an interesting bug with your Fitaly keyboard...
In some apps (Evernote & Facebook) but not others (the default browser address bar), when you use a single (or double) quote. Specifically, a contraction like can't << if I were to type that... when I type the ' it deletes the "can" characters.
Isn't (see I love my ' ) that weird? Can anybody reproduce this behavior?
Is it a problem with the keyboard, or maybe the way certain apps are interpreting the keyed input..? I know you haven't worked on this for a long time, but I thought somebody might be curious.
I've written before here. If it helps, I'll test and feedback using my LG Optimus P999 device
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