All forums » Creating Skins, Scripts and Modules » Creating Virtual Keyboard Layouts
Page 1 of 1
| Message |
Silverjuke Versions > 1.01 support a virtual keyboard which is useful esp. in combination with the kiosk mode (see "Settings/Kiosk mode/Virtual keyboard").
This document describes how the virtual keyboard keys may be customized eg. to fit the needs of a complete localization.
A brief overview
A virtual keyboard layout is a plain text file that contains statements as
name=value;Line breaks are not significant, you may put any number of statements into a single line - however, do not forget the trailing semicolon. The file must be encoded as ISO8859-1. To use the file in Silverjuke, it must have the extension *.sjk and must be located in one of the search paths.
To define a virtual keyboard, first set its name and then simply define all keys one by one, starting from the first key in the first row and ending with the last key in the last row. The following snippet contains a complete and valid keyboard with the keys a-c:
layout=My first test;
key=a;
key=b;
key=c;If you also want to type the upper-case letters, you can define a shift key and set the shifted values for all letters:
layout=My second test;
key=a; shift=A;
key=b; shift=B;
key=c; shift=C;
key=shift;Before reading on, it may be a good idea to have a look at the already existing virtual keyboard layouts.
Multiple lines of keys
Of course, you can use multiple lines of keys; just use the statement nextline; for this purpose.
key=a;
nextline;
key=b;The title of a key
If you want to show a different title than the key itself on key, add the title in double quotes to the value:
key=a "A";Alt- and Dead-keys
You may define up to 32 Alt- or Dead-keys which work simelar to the shift keys. Moreover, each Alt-key may be combined with "shift", so you may have up to 64 additional states of the keyboard.
The Alt-keys have the special names "alt1", "alt2" ... "alt32" and are defined as any other key using eg. the statement key=alt1;. To define the alternative keys if an alt key is pressed, just add statements as alt1=@ and alt1shift=$ behind the key-statement. Example:
key=a; shift=A; alt1=@; alt2=[; alt2shift=];
key=alt1;
key=alt2 "Alt";As you see we've added a title only to the second alt-key. This is because the first alt-key automatically gets the title "AltGr" if noting else is given.
Note: Silverjuke versions smaller that 3.02 only allow up to 9 Alt-Keys.
Defining special keys
You can also define any key using its hexadecimal representation, eg. key=a; and key=0x61; refer to the same character. Some keys must ALWAYS be written in this representation: the space, the backslash and the semicolon; in this order:
key=0x20;
key=0x5c;
key=0x3b;This way you can also access all Unicode characters, eg. with key=0x3b1; you can access the greek letter alpha. Some other special keys are "backsp", "clearall" and "enter":
key=backsp;
key=clearall;
key=enter;Finally, very special is the pseudo-key "entercont" which may be used to span the enter key over two rows, see the already existing keyboard layouts for an example.
Using different key widths
Normally, all keys have a relative width of 1.0. With the "width"-statement you can give some keys different widths. If you want to let the spacebar be 5 times wider than a normal key, use the following statement:
key=0x20; width=5.0;To create a "natural" keyboard layout, you may need some empty room, esp. aleft of a row start. For this, use the "spacer"-statement:
key=backsp;
nextline;
spacer; width=0.7;
key=q;Multiple layouts in one file
A final hint: By just repeating the layout-statement, you can put more than one layout into a single *.sjk file.
That's all so far - if there are questions left, feel free to post them to this thread.
If you are also doing a localization to another language and this language needs a special virtual keyboard layout, you can also embed a virtual keyboard definition as described above to the special field "__VIRT_KEYBD__" of the *.po file.
More information about Silverjuke localization can be found in the following thread:
http://www.silverjuke.net/forum/topic-51.html
... and if you want to publish the virtual keyboard here in the forum, the following post describes how to create a screenshot:
http://www.silverjuke.net/forum/topic-620.html
Normally, the Alt-states are reset if a key is pressed. Since Silverjuke 3.02 (coming soon), you can optionally "lock" the Alt-states; for this purpose, simply add the "lock" keyword to the key-statement:
key=alt1 lock;This way, you can create "shift lock" or "caps lock" keys. Or you can add two completely different alphabets to one keyboard layout.