Keyboard Idea

retropaul

You could have a keyboard at the bottom of the screen for certain things such as wifi and other typed stuff. It would be similar to the keyboard that you would use on your tv. Then you could use your joystick on your controller to move around.

retroprogrammer

@retropaul That would be mighty helpful if you could make it :-)

Their was some talk about it here if your interested:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10416/feature-request-on-screen-keyboard-on-retropie

and here:
https://blog.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/on-screen-keyboard/

retropaul

@retroprogrammer hmm... maybe I'll start trying to work on it

retroprogrammer

@retropaul Nice! ask me and the retro pie community if help is needed :)

glennlake

I did a google search and found this. "https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/41150/virtual-keyboard-activation" It looks like it will work with raspian. I haven't tried it yet but I'll see if I can get to it tomorrow.

retroprogrammer

@glennlake I'll have I try and see what happens

glennlake

Well... I finally tried the virtual keyboard on an install of retropie and it doesn't work (at least I can't make it work). I will need to dig a bit deeper and see if I can find something that will work. I really like this idea and I have seen it in other software like kodi that has a keyboard built into the software. Keep the faith!

caver01

@glennlake yeah, the problem with this keyboard is that in runs on top of the desktop GUI, only we don’t boot to the desktop. That is going to make it hard to find any solution I think.

What about a smartphone interface for a keyboard, or one that runs as a web server that you can access with your phone? That’s not on screen, but maybe that is OK.

mitu

This post is deleted!

glennlake

The phone or wireless keyboard are great but the original question was how to have an on screen keyboard for those rare times when you need to enter something. I'm going to keep looking and trying different things.

caver01

@glennlake said in Keyboard Idea:

the original question was how to have an on screen keyboard

Yes, I understand. I was just being realistic about the idea, as I think there are many functional requirements that will be difficult barriers to overcome:

The solution will have to work outside of xwindows desktop GUI.
The solution must leverage some kind of key selection interface (like a D-pad or joystick maybe? probably needs to be configurable.)

I don't want to squelch enthusiasm about this, as I think there are obvious benefits to having a keyboard onscreen when needed, but these two requirements alone are tall orders. Number 1 means you would be invoking some kind of graphical overlay. Would it work on top of the command line interface so you could enter linux commands? Or, perhaps you are thinking it just needs to work on top of Emulation Station. Number 2 implies some awareness of all of the possible customizations for controls that are out there. This might be easier if it just needed to work in ES or could leverage ES settings.

There are other basic functional requirements such as key layout, localization settings, size, position, etc., all of which would need to be worked out.

With custom code, anything is possible, but as you search, details like these will help narrow the possibilities. I suspect something would have to be coded for our purposes.

One potential search avenue is accessibility. I have not looked into it, but there may be tools that exist for persons with disabilities or who need alternative input capabilities for one reason or another. Just a thought.

retropaul

@caver01 It would probably be easier to make a wifi section into es. We could make a slider type setting at the top of the keyboard to change localization.

retropaul

@caver01 btw, I'm interested in creating this, how would I go about doing that?

caver01

@retropaul I am probably not the right person to give you the best answer, as I have only contributed to documentation and support here, but the github repos are out there and I have read more than one developer mentioning that they are open to pull requests. So, my advice, for what it is worth, is to build something and offer it as others have as something to test/try, eventually probably leading to a PR on the existing platform. Sorry I cannot be more specific as a developer might be able to.

retropaul

@caver01 thanks for the help!

lilbud

Maybe we can look into how Retroarch implements its virtual keyboard.

retropaul

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retropaul

@retroprogrammer Just remembered you said I could ask you for questions. Is there anyway to get to the emulation station files in the retropie github? (after I fork it of course). I started something on my emulation station fork then realized they aren't the same.

retroprogrammer

@retropaul sorry, I am not good at GitHub, that isn't my strong point as I only started GitHub when I made my Original Xbox case sorry

mitu

@retropaul You should fork https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation, not the original ES repo (https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation) , which hasn't had any activity for years.