Gaia/System/Keyboard/Layout: Difference between revisions

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Hello! The goal of this document is to allow people to add keyboard layout of their own language/script on the '''v1 Gaia Keyboard app'''.
This document have been moved to [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Developing_Gaia/Customizing_the_keyboard MDN].


== Status of the Gaia Keyboard app & system architecture ==
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?title=Gaia/System/Keyboard/Layout&action=history History of this page].
 
=== Current version ===
 
As of mid-2013, the built-in Gaia keyboard app is the only keyboard app available in Firefox OS. That means, if you would like to add your own keyboard layout, you would have to modify the app itself and push it to your unlocked developer phone.
 
=== Next version ===
 
We plan to introduce plug-able keyboard/IME architecture directly into the OS in the next version. For details, see [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=816869 bug 816869]. When the feature is released, the users should be able to buy or install their own keyboard app, and use the layouts of those 3rd-party keyboard apps in conjunction with the built-in ones.
 
== How-tos ==
 
The section below assumes that you know how to flash your own Gaia on the phone (i.e., <code>make install-gaia</code>), or update the <code>application.zip</code> of keyboard app for Firefox OS Simulator.
 
=== Add a simple layout in the Gaia keyboard app ===
 
A simple layout refers to, e.g., Qwerty layout for English, where the app simply outputs what the user taps directly (as opposed to having the keys handles in Asian IMEs).
 
# Modify [https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/apps/keyboard/js/layout.js layout.js] to add your own layout here. You should be able to figure out the syntax by looking at the definition of other layouts.
# Reference your keyboard layout by hard-coding its name [https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/apps/keyboard/js/keyboard.js#L490 here] in the <code>enabledKeyboardNames</code> array. That will enable your layout no matter what you'd choose in the Settings app.
 
Obviously you would have to do something else in order to make your keyboard layout show up as a setting entry and to make it toggle-able, but this document describes the minimum.
 
=== Add a layout what works with an Asian IME ===
 
==== Introduction ====
 
East Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) use [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJK a fairly complex script] that involves thousands of characters. As there is no way to put thousands of keys on a hardware keyboard nor a software keyboard, users would rely on a piece of indexing program called [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_method input method], or IME for short, to convert series of symbols into a selections of candidate characters.
 
How symbols should be converted and how "smart" the IME should be depends on the method chosen, implementation itself, and often [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing NLP] science, which is outside the scope of this document. One thing to note is that it is highly recommended to put the database part into IndexedDB, in order to conserve memory on a mobile device.
 
==== IM Engine interface in Gaia keyboard app ====
 
Assuming you have an IME library readily available for converting symbols into characters (''IM Engine'' in our terminology), you would need to use the defined interface within Gaia Keyboard app, available to the library to receive symbols from the layout, and to output the characters. The current API is documented [https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/blob/master/apps/keyboard/js/keyboard.js#L32-L115 in the comment here]. We invite implementations in order to further refine this API within Gaia.
 
==== Make your IM engine work with your layout ====
 
# Put a new layout in layout.js as the previous section described.
# Reference the IM engine with <code>imEngine</code> property. When your layout is enabled, the keyboard app would start loading the script located at <code>keyboard/js/imes/<imEngine>/<imEngine>.js</code>.
# APIs to receive and send the keys/characters should be setup when the script is loaded and <code>init</code>'d.
# When the user tap any key/symbols on the keyboard, it would get send to the IM engine. Do whatever you want in response to the user input.
 
==== Known implementations ====
 
* [https://github.com/timdream/jszhuyin JSZhuyin] is the first implementation of Gaia Keyboard Asian IM engine, for Zhuyin IME for Traditional Chinese. Blame the author if you think the current API sucks.
* [https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/master/apps/keyboard/js/imes/jskanji JSKanji] is a prototype IM engine written for Japanese.
* [https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia/tree/master/apps/keyboard/js/imes/jspinyin JSPinyin] is a written for Simplified Chinese and works by tapping Pinyin symbols.
* As a demonstration, [http://chewing.csie.net/ Chewing], an C/C++ open-source Zhuyin IME for Traditional Chinese, was [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=845685 cross-compiled with emscripten] and linked with Gaia keyboard.
* [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=835261 JSHangul] will be a prototype IM engine for Korean.
 
== Discussion, Q&A, etc ==
 
Please come to [https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia dev-gaia] mailing list or the <code>#gaia</code> channel on irc.mozilla.org. <code>#mozilla-taiwan</code> is the de-facto Chinese-language channel for this topic.

Latest revision as of 02:36, 17 August 2014

This document have been moved to MDN.

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