Develop Reference

how to initialize android text keyboard starting from numpad

I need to open android text keyboard that starts from numpad. I would like to access both numpad and alphabetical characters in same keyboard like android:inputType="text". But, I want to see numpad part first (like in picture) when keyboard opened.
As far as I know, there is no InputType option that obtain this result.
I found this answer that shows how to use privateImeOptions to change soft keyboard settings but couldn't find further information.
Is there any way to achieve this?
Thanks

Custom Android Keyboard - Key to Change "Keyboards"

I am creating my own Android Keyboard and I would like to add a key that when pressed it will open up the "Input Methods/Keyboards" dialog so I can change the keyboard.
Pretty much the same functionality the default keyboard has which if you hold "space" it will show a popup that allows you to change to other input method.
I haven't been able to find out if there is any predefined class doing such an action. If you can help me I will really appreciate it.
Thanks

How to control the auto suggest text at the top of on screen keyboard for android EditText controls

When typing in an EditText control - some autocomplete/autosuggest words are made available at the top of the control.
Like below:
I have a situation where the user should only be entering words from a pre-known set of existing words. As such it would improve the user experience to control the autosuggest list, and have only words from this list appear.
All my searches on this subject have turned up is suggestions to use AutoCompleteTextView for this purpose, however this is not 100% ideal - below is a screenshot of AutoCompleteTextView in action:
The suggestions show as a popup list, and the top of the on screen keyboard now has unnecessary blank spaces.
So while this sort of 'works' - it isn't a 100% ideal user experience, it will feel 'hacky' to the user, and not as native/seamlessly integrated with the android experience as it should be.
So my main question(s)
1) Is there a way to either have the AutoCompleteTextView show its suggestions at the top of the on screen keyboard?
2) Or even better/alternatively, is there a way to hook into the autosuggest/spelling feature of the on screen keyboard for EditText itself instead?

Yes, you can. InputMethodManager.displayCompletions will give the keyboard a list of possible completions. Depending on the keyboard, it should display those but it may ignore them. That's how ACTV works behind the scenes.

Opening Keypad with GO

Hi I want to open keypad when the EditText is focused , with GO in place of Next and Done Buttons.
I used
android:imeOptions="actionGo"
in EditText xml tag but it's only showing an arrow not GO.
Thanks in advance

The keyboard itself decides what to show, based on its own set of choices. There is no way to force it to show anything, and not all keyboards will decide based on the same things. You can improve your odds by only using 1 of those options and by making sure its not multiline (many keyboards will not remove their enter key in a multiline edit field), but its still up to the keyboard.

How to prevent the soft keyboard from displaying, or at least evict it once it does?

My app has an EditText that, when I click in it to enter text in the Emulator, brings up a soft keyboard. I don't want this confounded thing to begin with, but then, like the visiting loud-mouthed uncle in the plaid pants, doesn't want to go away, and it is blocking the button beneath it. How do I either (a) prorgrammatically prevent the soft keyboard from appearing or at least (b) evict it, albeit manually, when it pops up?

Provided that the user is not supposed to input text, but is able to click the EditText and then add text in some other way, you could change the EditText to a TextView and then apply the following three tags to it in the layout file:
style="#android:style/Widget.EditText"
android:editable="false"
android:focusableInTouchMode="false"
This will make it look like an EditText, but behave like a TextView.
Since you want the user to be able to write stuff in the EditText there are in my opinion two solutions:
Leave it be. To remove the keyboard, all you need is to hit the back button once and every Android user knows this. It's standard behaviour.
Wrap everything but the Button you say dissapears in a ScrollView. The ScrollView will then wrap its content to allow the Button to be shown in between the keyboard and the ScrollView.

Just set android:editable="false" for your EditText

The answer is to set the focus on an other View like a Button, TextView or similar:
// REQUEST FOCUS
viewName.setFocusableInTouchMode(true);
viewName.requestFocus();

I think what you really need is take a look at android:windowSoftInputMode attribute in Manifest.xml Look into this link.
You can specify the screen to pan/ resize to show the buttons that the input method might be blocking. Not allowing the keyboard to show will make the user unable to enter text at all!