Have anyone made software keyboard on moai?

[kengo.nakajima]

Hi, now I want to implement text-input for getting player name and password on moai.

I want the same Lua code work on PC(win/mac) and iOS.



In Moai, I think we have to implement software keyboard on Lua.

I am now searching for a product someone made already.

Otherwise I have to write it and it'll take some days..



Do you have any information about software keyboards?

Or another solution on inputting text on Moai?

[anddrewscott]

By soft keyboard do you mean virtual? 
This is available to Corona SDK users, it is used for testing on their simulator (no iPod native on it), but is unnecessary for device builds.

[eric]

We have a software keyboard in our in house game, Wolf Toss. The most time consuming part was layout - which we had an artist do in Photoshop. The artist was then able to give screen coordinates of all the buttons to our scripter who was implementing the keyboard - saving us lots of time. Once everything is laid out, the code to support the keyboard came together in a couple hours with a few pages of code.



I would recommend starting simple and expanding from that if you need something better. For example, a simple table with the keys' character and position provided dual use for us. We looped through it during button creation to get the positions and character to display on the button as well as being used to retrieve the character when a button was hit.

...

[ 11 ] = { x = 95, y = -305, char = "q" },

[ 12 ] = { x = 175, y = -305, char = "w" },

[ 13 ] = { x = 255, y = -305, char = "e" },

[ 14 ] = { x = 335, y = -305, char = "r" },

[ 15 ] = { x = 415, y = -305, char = "t" },

[ 16 ] = { x = 495, y = -305, char = "y" },

[ 17 ] = { x = 575, y = -305, char = "u" },

[ 18 ] = { x = 655, y = -305, char = "i" },

[ 19 ] = { x = 735, y = -305, char = "o" },

[ 20 ] = { x = 815, y = -305, char = "p" }, 

...

When we create the props for the buttons, we associate them with an index in this table. Therefore, when we check if the prop was hit during an 'up' touch event, we can add the correct character to our buffer. So the basic update loop will check the touch position against our table of props ( through a loop ). If one is hit, we lookup the proper character and add it to the buffer. That is really all it takes! From there you can add complexity on top, such as implementing character limits, scaling buttons or switching art index on press, etc. 

[anddrewscott]

So sorry, I forgot a link.
http://developer.anscamobile.c.....o-native 

[backroll]

I'm new here, but if I'm reading this correctly, does that mean moai has no way to receive text input on mobile devices? No way to use the built-in keyboards?

[kengo.nakajima]

as far as i know, it doesn't have it. roadmap?
I imagine we could use virtual keyboards like existing MOAIApp.showDialog(), and get text by callback function!

[patrick]

@backroll We haven't exposed the native software keyboard but it should be easy to add via MOAIApp just as Kengo suggests. So I wouldn't say there's 'no way' - Moai is open source, so there's always a way. You'd just need to add a method to display the keyboard and a callback to return the text. A fancy implementation would also return the size of the keyboard and add an animation callback. If you want to implement it, send me a pull request I'll merge it in. If not, it should be in by 1.0.

[Souledge]

Hello, congratulations on MOAI V 1 release.
I was wondering if this is resolved and included in the V1.0 as of today's release.

[patrick]

Not yet. Soon(tm).

[Souledge]

Not yet. Soon(tm).

Hello Patrick =)
Thank you for your response, do you have any idea on the time frame of this? 1 month, 2 months? The reason I need to know is because this in addition to the Chinese / Asian text greatly affect our decisions in whether Moai would be the suitable pipeline for our upcoming project. Thank you for your understanding.

[mikegriffin]

basic-soft-keyboard-t520/

[patrick]

@mikegriffin Very nice!

@Souledge Will aim to support native software keyboard within a month.

[Souledge]

Awesome guys! Thank you.

@mikegriffin Thank you Mike for your contribution, it's greatly appreciated!

@Patrick Thank you Patrick! =) Just one last question regarding this topic: We now know that Chinese and other asian texts can be displayed, do you have any plans to support Chinese and other asian text typing using the keyboard? Are there any chat system being on the agenda? The reason is because in the asian market, games are usually under the freemium model, so in order to profit, micro-transaction is essentially vital to success, and as we all know with micro-transaction comes with on-line multiplayer interaction and social media integration. With that, it's only natural to assume that people would want to chat and communicate with their friends inside the game with their default localized language =) If this is also on the agenda, do you know the time-frame? Thank you Patrick for your awesome work and support, keep rocking and keep rolling =)

[patrick]

Good question. Chat would be a Moai Cloud thing. I will ask Rob tomorrow. Re Asian language support, absolutely. We'll be wrapping the phone's native keyboard so it should work under whatever locale the phone uses.

[thebullno1]

MOAIKeyboardSensor is already there but the returned value is arbitrary for now. I think it's time for Moai to give some sort of specification for host implementers to ensure that the same lua code can work across different hosts.

[patrick]

That's a good idea as well. I remember we talked about that early on but it fell through the cracks. Will open an issue for it...

[rob]

We don't have a specific chat feature on the agenda, but we do have some basic building blocks that would allow for the easy development of a chat feature. Once that is in place I could easily see us creating a Moai Direct Chat service. The timeframe for it isn't set yet, but it is moving up our priority list. If it's something you are interested in provide some feedback for it on our features page.

https://moaicloud.uservoice.com/forums/137991-features

[kaykim]

This is friendly reminder of supporting native software keyboard.

I was wondering if you shared any update on the time frame with us.

@Souledge Will aim to support native software keyboard within a month.

[ibisum]

I don't get it .. I'm already using MOAIKeyboardIOS.getText() .. is this not what you guys need too?

Code: Select all

1.  


2. function oniOSKeyInput ( start, length, text )


3.   print ( start, length, text )


4.   user_entered_text = MOAIKeyboardIOS.getText ()


5.   print ( user_entered_text )


6. end


7.  


8. function oniOSKeyReturn ()


9.   user_entered_text = MOAIKeyboardIOS.getText ()


10.   print ( user_entered_text )


11. end


12.  


13. if MOAIKeyboardIOS then


14.     MOAIKeyboardIOS.setListener ( MOAIKeyboardIOS.EVENT_INPUT, oniOSKeyInput )


15.     MOAIKeyboardIOS.setListener ( MOAIKeyboardIOS.EVENT_RETURN, oniOSKeyReturn )


16. end


17.  


18. -- for development on MacOSX


19. if MOAIInputMgr.device.keyboard then


20.     MOAIInputMgr.device.keyboard:setCallback(onKeyboardEvent)


21. end


22.  

EDIT: Just noticed that this is only working on iOS, and not Android. Alas, MOAIKeyboardAndroid would be really nice to have as well ..

[kaykim]

Yes, that's the problem I have. I'm going to use Facebook, Google and Twitter for Authentication, but Moai doesn't support keyboard for Android yet.

I don't get it .. I'm already using MOAIKeyboardIOS.getText() .. is this not what you guys need too?

EDIT: Just noticed that this is only working on iOS, and not Android. Alas, MOAIKeyboardAndroid would be really nice to have as well ..