Matchbox Keyboard Update

[Grimulkan]

In response to allovertheglobe, here is an update to the original matchbox keyboard. I intend to work on this for a while, so suggestions are welcome.

The Matchbox Keyboard is part of the Matchbox Project which was ported by iRex to work on the DR. It pops up when you want to search the dictionary, search inside documents and also in third party applications such as Leafpad and Xournal.

List of changes:
Version 0.2:
1. Character repeat interval changed to a more reasonable value. You should no longer be surprised by a ginormous repeated string when holding down a key. This was due to slow display refreshes, the first few repeats now match up with the refreshes.
2. Key highlights removed. If you ever noticed, the original matchbox keyboard actually has each key "light up" as you click them, but this is mostly lost on an eink screen due to the display refresh rate. Sometimes the keys happen to "light up" in sync with the refresh, leading to sudden flickers (annoying IMHO). This no longer happens.
3. Keys look "more rounded", special keys are shaded gray to differentiate them at a glance. The faces of the "toggle" keys (such as Ctrl and Caps-lock) now invert when active.
Version 0.1:
1. Key borders darkened for quick identification and overall contrast improvement.

Known issues:
1. Sometimes the shading on a key ends up looking slightly lighter/darker than it should be.
2. Several rapid shift state changes result in "ghosting" which makes the letters on the keys difficult to read.
Issues (1) and (2) are related to eink displays in general - we'll have to live with them (for now).
3. In one instance, the update failed to restart the DR after upgrading. Possibly a specific hardware issue. See posts below.

Installation instructions for firmware 1.5 (similar to the CTB update):

0. If you already have an earlier upgrade to the matchbox keyboard installed, UNINSTALL it first. You should already have a "Restore Matchbox Keyboard" shortcut on your DR, which should restore the original matchbox keyboard shipped with firmware 1.5.
1. Download the file updkbd_0.2.zip to your computer and unzip.
2. Copy the Programs folder and its contents to the root of your SD card on the DR. Essentially, you should see a
<SD Drive>:\Programs\_upd-matchbox-keyboard
on your computer.
NOTE: The .desktop files are merely shortcuts and can be placed anywhere on the DR. If you like, you can create a folder called "Add/Remove Programs" inside "Programs" and place the 2 .desktop files there, if you think your Programs folder is too cluttered.
3. It is best if you shut down all applications that are using the keyboard on your DR. Also try and make sure that your battery level is not too low (above 35%), or connect the DR to a power supply.
4. Navigate to Documents->Programs (or wherever you put the shortcuts) on your DR and select "Update Matchbox Keyboard". The DR will restart to make changes effective, give it about 30 seconds to do its job.

Ideas for later versions (if and when):
1. Buttons such as the space bar and the shift keys can be shortened to accommodate a few more buttons or so (such as ?, ! or $).
2. Optional dictionary lookup for autocompletion suggestions and spell checking.
3. Map some of the DR keys to keys on the keyboard (such as mapping center "round button" to shift for faster typing).

Update 03/26: Source has been attached. Look at howto_patch.txt for information.
Update 05/13: With the release of firmware 1.6, you should not need this update anymore.

[pthwaite]

I can't get it to install. Keeps saying the application cannot be found. I've tried a couple of times with the same result.

Howard

[Grimulkan]

Weird, I'll take a look. It may have something to do with the permissions being handled differently from the emulator.

EDIT: I've updated it, try now. Does it say "cannot open" or "cannot find"?

The "cannot open" error typically means that the script does not have execute permission, and I have to figure out how to fix that without console access on the DR (on the emulator its a simple matter of ssh+chmod). I didn't think this would be a problem as the filesystem on the SD card is FAT32. Did you copy over the entire folder structure to your SD card root? So in Windows (or Linux) there should be a <Drive:>/Programs/_upd-matchbox-keyboard present, with the 2 script (.sh) files in it.

I just tried it out and it works fine with the emu. My DR just shipped and will be here tomorrow, I'll take a look if it still does not work. Out of curiosity, what OS do you run?

[allovertheglobe]

Just tried the latest version, crashed the Reader when installing (hung display, red light on top) Ouch.

I am unable to reset the device at all, even with the card removed. Will maybe wait until the battery dies.

DO NOT TRY THIS FOR FOR NOW!!

UPDATE:
Well, this was one of those c**p-in-your-pants moments! Despite how much some people complain about the DR1000's inadequacies, I like mine very much! I've never run into this kind of trouble before with all my experiments so far.

Reset wouldn't work, holding it for ~30sec would see the red light die down, but then come back immediately. Inserting the card with the firmware 1.5 update didn't do anything since the reader was unable to reset...

Holding reset for a couple of minutes finally seemed to turn it off completely (no more red light) But then it wouldn't turn back on, even with more reset attempts... finally after connecting it to my PC, it came back to life.

It looked like it had to restart at least twice, hanging the first time after a couple of seconds. After booting completed, it also reported the firmware update. I held off to test the keyboard, and lo and behold, it has been updated (see attached picture)!

The battery calibration seems to be off, since it reported almost no power left, which was not the case before. A couple of recharge cycles should take care of that.

Now could we please have a less scary way to do this?

[Grimulkan]

Woah! Did not expect that. I seriously wonder why, the update could not be more simple, and is exactly like the content browser one, in fact. Will look into it, but until then, hold of the downloads.

@allovertheglobe: You may want to reflash to the original 1.5 just in case. Sorry about the scare Glad to know it works though, will fix. Is this what you had in mind (apart from the heart-in-mouth moment)?

[allovertheglobe]

I'll stick with it for now. I have rebooted/recharged the unit and will see if anything else comes up (and let you know)

As far as the keyboard goes, yes, that's certainly very close (beyond the cosmetic rounded corners), the only difference is that I had the special keys (modifiers, cursor, return) shaded to distinguish them further, but I don't know how feasible that would be.

Great job as it works for now, thanks for giving it a go!

[Grimulkan]

Originally Posted by allovertheglobe

Just tried the latest version, crashed the Reader when installing (hung display, red light on top) Ouch.

<snip>

I just tested both install and uninstall scripts on my DR, multiple times, and it works fine! Could you walk me through what you did? Perhaps it is just one of the many mysteries of the DR, and perhaps one that will not happen too often. If you have the time, could you also remove, and then reinstall the keyboard update, and let me know how that goes?

When you run the update script, make sure you don't have the keyboard itself running somewhere in the background and give it about 30 seconds to do its job.

A general word of caution: both this and the content browser installation scripts are not meant to be run twice in a row (without "uninstalling" in between). If you do, you'll end up overwriting the backup with no way to restore the original firmware short of a reflash.

Because of the trouble you had, I suspect this is not the best way iRex expects us to update the firmware, perhaps there is a cleaner way of doing it instead of writing directly to the internal memory...

[pthwaite]

Funny, After trying a couple of times and failing as per my above post, I tried once more and success. Oh well. Cheers Grimulkan.

[allovertheglobe]

Originally Posted by Grimulkan

I just tested both install and uninstall scripts on my DR, multiple times, and it works fine! Could you walk me through what you did? <snip>

I just unzipped the folder, put everything on the card ("Programs" folder as designated), inserted it and clicked on "Update Matchbox Keyboard". After a couple of seconds the display got corrupted & hung, and the LED turned solid red. I did not run anything before doing the update (including anything using the keyboard), I know better than that.

It may have just been just some weird lockup. If you are using the same update process than the contentbrowser update, it should be OK since I never had any problems with those ones so far. Maybe it is tied to some hardware glitch, like some people having the the pen lock-up bug and others not (like me...)

When I get around to it, I'll reinstall 1.5 and try it again, and post the result here.

[Grimulkan]

Originally Posted by allovertheglobe

<snip>
It may have just been just some weird lockup. If you are using the same update process than the contentbrowser update, it should be OK since I never had any problems with those ones so far. Maybe it is tied to some hardware glitch, like some people having the the pen lock-up bug and others not (like me...)

It *is* the same update script as the content browser. In an effort to reproduce the error, I tried installing/uninstalling under every possible situation I could think of.

I didn't have any trouble, except when the battery level was below 25%. The update itself worked but the DR got stuck booting, but booted fine when I connected it to the external battery pack/wall charger/computer. Interestingly, it also booted fine without the SD card inserted, but this wasn't very repeatable and probably not directly related.

If the above problem was not due to low battery, perhaps it really is a specific hardware issue. In any case, I'm removing the warning from the first post so others can download it, I don't think the problems are directly related to the update. Someone correct me if they feel otherwise.

Originally Posted by pthwaite

Funny, After trying a couple of times and failing as per my above post, I tried once more and success. Oh well. Cheers Grimulkan.

Thanks I actually did encounter similar "cannot open" errors, although it had nothing to do with my update. The errors either fix themselves, or can be fixed by deleting the metadata.db file in the troublesome folder (or target folder, in the case of a troublesome shortcut).

EDIT: I've put up version 0.2 with a few updates. Check out the original post, and be sure to run the uninstallation script for 0.1 before upgrading.

[allovertheglobe]

I installed the newest version, no problem this time. The keyboard is looking great! And the ghosting is much less indeed than with the original keyboard.

- One glitch I noticed with the shaded (modifier) keys: if you select them (say Shift), then deselect them, they loose their grey shade. However once the keyboard is refreshed (hiding it & back, wake up from sleep) it's OK again.

- General improvements: Can't think of many things. Some improvements, like adding the equivalent of a numeric keypad, aren't worth it since it's not a real keyboard, you'll always be tapping one character at a time anyway... The special characters are there, so are the international ones (I use both french and german myself)...

One thing that I find curious is the replacement of the escape key (which could be used to close the keyboard?) has been replaced with the Euro character, of all things?? I guess it must be the "business" image of the DR1000

Originally Posted by Grimulkan

It *is* the same update script as the content browser. In an effort to reproduce the error, I tried installing/uninstalling under every possible situation I could think of. <snip>

Reading over my post, it can be read as implying that you didn't use the same script, but I didn't mean that, I apologize. I meant to say that even tough it -is- the same script, the fact that it crashed so badly might be some other issue, maybe hardware, maybe firmware-related, due to one of the previous updates I ran perhaps.

[Grimulkan]

Originally Posted by allovertheglobe

<snip>
One glitch I noticed with the shaded (modifier) keys: if you select them (say Shift), then deselect them, they loose their grey shade. However once the keyboard is refreshed (hiding it & back, wake up from sleep) it's OK again.

Curiously, there is nothing in the code that should trigger this behavior, and I can only conclude that this is an "artifact" of the display (or display driver) itself.

Edit: See here for an explanation.

Originally Posted by allovertheglobe

<snip>
One thing that I find curious is the replacement of the escape key (which could be used to close the keyboard?) has been replaced with the Euro character, of all things?? I guess it must be the "business" image of the DR1000

I toyed with the idea of changing this, then decided against it. An escape key would be superfluous for the applications currently available anyway.

[Viacheslav]

Where is the patch code? I am making another custom version of matchbox-keyboard to support cyrillic/latin layout cycling and I would like to integrate both patches. Besides, not releasing the patch is a GPL violation

[Grimulkan]

Originally Posted by Viacheslav

Where is the patch code? I am making another custom version of matchbox-keyboard to support cyrillic/latin layout cycling and I would like to integrate both patches. Besides, not releasing the patch is a GPL violation

Whoops! Completely forgot that I hadn't uploaded it. Will do ASAP.

[Grimulkan]

Done

This is the original 1.5 source with the patch file included.