I often find myself writing to different people in different languages. Every time I have to switch to the correct language to avoid false auto-correction.
The language only depends on the person I am talking to, that is I will always talk in italian to a, b and c; in english to l and m; in french with x.
Is there a keyboard that keeps track of that, or a way to have it automatically configured when switching contacts?
No
And here is why: the User can set the keyboard in the settings for the phone. Also called input method editor (IME) by google.
As you can see in this developers guide, you can create your own IME.
But the problem is, you need to get the Contact data from the App that you are running (What's App, Telegram, Slack, etc), and unless they support that, what I very much doubt, you will not pull this off.
Maybe, quite hackish.
What might work is that the moment you open your custom IME, it takes a screenshot (not sure it could do that). Use that screenshot to parse out the Contact name. Try to match that with the Accounts on the phone. And use that to set the keyboard... But that is not a Keyboard I would like to have on my phone if it wasn't developed my me!
Related
I'm building a single purpose app for one and only one device model. Therefore I allow switching languages within the app as I do not want the user to open the settings.
I was successful in changing the Locale.
I was unsuccessful switching the language input (understand switching the keyboard from thai to english and english to thai).
Note: It comes from factory with English and Thai language inputs already installed and available.
Note 2 : I've seen a load of solution on google but I find none of them precise enough to know if it's doable and how to perform this. I mention this because I'd like to avoid one more copy paste of this solution for eg : Change Keyboard Input Language Programmatically. It might be a good solution, but I just don't get it.
In our Android app, we have an option for the user to change the language, which means he can select whether he want to use English or Sinhala. The default is always in English. We have one string.xml for English and another for Sinhala.
I was referring Android documents about "localization" but that is not exactly what I am looking for, I can't ask the user to change his phone settings. I also noticed programmatic localization which is discussed in here but most users do not recommend it due to loads of errors (anyway these posts are pretty old)
So, what's the best way of changing the String?XML file, with the preferred language of a user? It seems not easy on Android.
Or, is this is simply not a good idea?
I'm following posts like:
How to develop a soft keyboard for Android?
Create Custom Keyboard in Android
I was wondering though, is their a way to default to using another keyboard?
IE: I want to only cover the email input, nothing else. What can I do to make it use the system keyboard, or Swift or another keyboard for all other inputs (Numbers, general text etc.).
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/text/InputType.html
Any help is appreciated, I've not gotten to play too much with this, just want to see feasibility before I start a project.
Cheers,
Justin W.
Using InputMethodService, you can definitely switch to another IME if you want to.
But, once another IME is activated, you cant switch from another IME to your IME. This is for security reasons.
It's clearly mentioned in the Docs.
A client application can ask that the system let the user pick a new
IME, but can not programmatically switch to one itself. This avoids
malicious applications from switching the user to their own IME, which
remains running when the user navigates away to another application.
An IME, on the other hand, is allowed to programmatically switch the
system to another IME, since it already has full control of user
input.
I am creating an Android application for a customer which will be pre-installed and distributed together with the handsets. Now the customer asked me to lock down the ROM to prevent the future users from using anything else apart from this one app. I.e. no browsing, no email, nothing which could create any costs etc.
Now after some googling it seems to be relatively straightforward to remove applications from an Android image. But even if I can remove the web browser, email client, the Android Market App etc, how can I make sure that the user will not reinstall those apps via the USB connector? As Android is just Linux I am sure there are ways of denying all users the right to install new applications (or actually denying them pretty much anything apart from using this one app).
If somebody could point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.
EDIT:
To clarify things a bit, the customer does not want to use the android devices as phones, even though they are phones. With 100€ touch screen phones becoming available, it becomes viable to use those phones for just one specific purpose. In my customers case, the device will be used as something like a POS system: the employee uses the phone to process a certain kind of customer request, and for this the app needs to have a data connection which will accrue costs of course. Now obviously contracts can be set up that will oblige employees to pay any irregular costs themselves, but why make it that complicated?
This is not about taking freedom away from users but rather about using android phones as general purpose touch screen devices with a data connection that employees can use in a business environment without shooting themselves in the foot with unexpected high data connection cost.
There's not really a whole lot you need to do to make a single-purpose device. If you play your cards right, it should be something you can do without having to tinker with the ROM.
The quick-and-easy route would be to deploy your application as a replacement for the stock launcher, just like any of the other home replacements that are available. Setting that as the default would cover most of the opportunities for casual tampering, since it would leave no other way to launch or install anything else. The only other things I can think of off the top of my head that you'd need to do are snag the search button so it doesn't bring up the default Android search box atop your app and the green key so the phone app won't come up.
You would, of course, need a way to get to the original launcher to maintain the device and install new versions of your app. I'd accomplish that using a "Maintenance" menu item somewhere that asks for some form of authentication (e.g., a password), changes the home app back to the original and launches it. When you're done doing what you need to do, set your app as the default launcher and you're back in business.
Edit to address MAINERROR (now Octavian Damiean)'s comment:
Any activity in any application can register itself as a home application by adding an intent filter on the android.intent.category.HOME category. It's literally four lines in the manifest, and you don't have to write any code to support it. Take a look at lines 77-82 in the stock launcher's manifest for an example of how this is done. (Ignore the filters on DEFAULT and MONKEY; they're not necessary.) Once the activity is selected as the default handler for the category, it becomes the first thing launched at boot and what comes up when the Home key is pressed. HTC Sense, aHome, Panda Home, etc. all use this mechanism.
Launching the stock home (or any other application) explicitly is about five lines of code.
Side note: There's a application on the Market called Home Switcher that lets you launch any of the activities filtering on the HOME category or set one as the default.
Unless the handset manufacturer adds a lot of shovelware, the stuff that runs in the background should be inconsequential and won't get in the way.
There was a similar question already somewhere. You can indeed limit the functionality of your device by the amount you want or have to. In order to achieve this you will definitely have to build your own modified ROM.
You will have to touch the ROM because you will have to get rid of several applications running in the background. One you won't need them anyway and two as you don't need them they would only consume resources.
You might want to take a look at http://source.android.com there you will find more information about the sources which will hopefully direct you where you need.
Blrfl's answer is great, but it still has a problem: if the user long presses the HOME button, the recent applications popup will appear an the user will be able to launch another app.
I would like to access the word lists used on android phones for spell checking (not including the user-defined-dictionary).
I am writing an app which i would like to be able to check if a word exists in the current phone users language. I imagine their is some API call or service i can use to access the build in word lists?
Any help would be great, thanks!
From what i know, each IME has its own dictionary and they probably implement their own method of reading from it. I have multiple keyboards installed on my phone, and if I add a word to the standard android keyboard, it still shows up as a miss-spelling if I switch to another keyboard.