Support customizable key layouts? about hackerskeyboard HOT 30 OPEN

AnySoftKeyboard supports seperately-installed layouts ("language packs"). Since 
it appears to be licensed under Apache License v2.0, as does Hacker's Keyboard, 
there should be no legal problem taking the code from there. This would not 
allow editing layout on the Android device, but would allow layouts to be 
downloaded from Android Market.
http://code.google.com/p/softkeyboard/

I'll take a look to see if it's feasible to integrate those, but I'm a bit 
short on time to work on the project at the moment so it may take a while.

I'd like to state my interest in this feature.  I can understand why it would 
be difficult to implement, however :)

...and my axe!

On a phone, I switch to landscape mode when I need to type something more than 
a few words/lines. Larger buttons means a little more accuracy.

It would be convenient to be able to switch to a layout mode which offers large 
buttons at the cost of fewer buttons on screen.

Maybe you could have a, built into apk, library of useful custom layouts 
instead of allowing users to customise at runtime?

agreed.. unfortunately in landscape mode this keyboard is only useful in 
connectbot as I will gladly go more slowly to gain all these keys.. but for a 
text msg or something i need large keys for its not practical. 

Issue 71 has been merged into this issue.

I think it would be useful to also support special keys as alternates, for 
example adding Home/End as alternates to the arrow keys. The current 
string-based alternates don't support that, but the new system ought to be more 
flexible.

FYI, I'm starting to make progress on this, I have a partial implementation for 
layout definitions based on simple text files with whitespace-separated entries 
as a replacement for the XML files. It's currently looking something like this:

title   English (Dvorak)
#
key_tlde        `       ~       ` ~
key_ae01        1       !       1 ! ¡ ¹ ½ ⅓ ¼ ⅛
key_ae02        2       @       2 @ ² ⅔
key_ae03        3       #       3 # ³ ¾ ⅜ ♥ ♠ ♦ ♣
key_ae04        4       $       4 $ ⁴ ¢ £ € ¥
key_ae05        5       %       5 % ⅝ ‰
key_ae06        6       ^       6 ^ ↑ ↓ ← →
key_ae07        7       &       7 & ⅞ ♪
key_ae08        8       *       8 * • ★ ∞ † ‡
key_ae09        9       (       9 ( √
key_ae10        0       )       0 ) ⁿ °
key_ae11        [       {       [ {
key_ae12        ]       }       ] }
#
key_ad01        '       "       ' " ‘ ’ “ ”
key_ad02        ,       <       , < ≤ « ‹
key_ad03        .       >       > ≥ » › …
key_ad04        p       P       4 π ₱
key_ad05        y       Y       5 ý ÿ ¥
key_ad06        f       F       6 ₣
key_ad07        g       G       7
key_ad08        c       C       8 ç č ć ¢
key_ad09        r       R       9
key_ad10        l       L       0 £ ₤ λ
key_ad11        /       ?       / ? ¿
key_ad12        =       +       = + ≈ ≠ ± × ÷
key_bksl        \       |       \ |

(Please don't start making definitions based on this, it's a work in progress.)

This'll be much easier to maintain, and lets me explicitly load specific 
layouts on the fly, and I no longer need to deal with the current 
hard-to-control resource loading mechanism that auto-loads from alternates 
directories based on the current locale.

The main improvement is that I can then define keyboard templates (specifying 
sizes and number of keys) separately from the layout map (assigning glyphs to 
keys), this provides far more flexibility.

More later, hopefully I'll have a functioning prototype soon.

Issue 73 has been merged into this issue.

Issue 43 has been merged into this issue.

Issue 105 has been merged into this issue.

Issue 118 has been merged into this issue.

Issue 130 has been merged into this issue.

Issue 148 has been merged into this issue.

Issue 172 has been merged into this issue.

Any news on this ? I'd really be interested to start working on a Swiss-French 
(ou Luxembourgish) Layout ;-)

[deleted comment]

Sorry, I haven't had time to work on it due to being too busy. It's still on my 
roadmap, but I'll need to find some continuous blocks of time to make progress 
- it isn't feasible to make such large changes in 5-minute blocks.

In the meantime, I can add language/country layouts based on the XML templates 
if I get the needed changes as contributions, see the 
http://code.google.com/p/hackerskeyboard/wiki/AddingNewLayouts page for 
details. If there's already a similar layout as a starting point, you can use 
the "Edit file" link in the project source section to make changes. This will 
prepare a patch for me to integrate. For example, here's the German QWERTZ 
5-row layout: 
http://code.google.com/p/hackerskeyboard/source/browse/java/res/values-de/donott
ranslate-keymap.xml

(FYI, I already have automated conversion code mostly working, my goal is that 
all current layouts will continue to be available after the migration to the 
new layout definition format.)

I'd like this feature too, for example on the French keyboard, we have some 
keys which are directly accessibles (; !), but not very useful on a phone. And 
some are missing in direct access, such as @ or . (dot).

Please add the Swiss-German Layout, please, please

[deleted comment]

[deleted comment]

I'd like to see user cusomization enabled too - though more specificallly 
having tab / colon / cursors / full stop all accesible from the 'aplha' 
keyboard in portrait mode - these are the keys I really use loads in connectbot 
- but without changing to a full 5 row layout. I guess toggling from the alpha 
keyboard to a cusomizable one is what I'm after.

As it stands it's still a great keyboard and on a Nexus 7 the five row layout 
in portrat is great with connectbot - really couldn't do without it!!

I'd like to see some progress here... my first Android, a transformer, is on 
order, so I was looking for Dvorak remapping. Sounds like you have it, hope it 
works with the dock keyboard too.  But I'd like to add some deadkey support to 
the standard Dvorak layout (unlikely to already be there...) so this issue 
seems to be relevant. I'll likely be able to survive the first while with plain 
Dvorak, but am curious about progress on this issue.

I am in the process of creating a keyboard layout that, while still English/US, 
has some slight changes to have a more grid-like layout, similar to physical 
thumbpads on mobile devices, e.g., "A" directly underneath "Q" instead of 
offset between "Q" and "W."

How would I name this layout so that it does not interfere with existing 
layouts? I am hesitant to allow anything to replace a stock EN-US QWERTY.

It is my understanding that the issue here refers to the keyboard layout in the 
sense of assignment of keys to chars, not really about shape and placement of 
keys themselves. Would it be possible to make 'grid-like' layout a global 
preference, that would work transparently with all language layouts?

unsubscribe me

Has there been any progress on this?

What I would really like to see is a way to specify which keys are displayed. 
I'm primarily interested in the main qwerty keys and the arrow keys, and am 
willing to forgo the use of the [, ], /, etc. to gain the larger display of the 
rest of the keys. The forgone keys could be displayed via long press.

I've been using swiftkey, with a row of keys on the bottom and the main qwerty 
keys, with the rest of the symbols accessed via long press. However the arrow 
keys consume too much screen space, and the keyboard takes over 50mb of RAM, 
which on my old phone with very little ram, means a lot.

I am working on the assumption that, for other languages to allow more keys 
than just A...L in the middle row, I'd just need to add in an extra key 
definition in the right places. (This is just my guess. I really have no idea 
what I am doing; I'm really just changing things in files and hoping for the 
best.)