Make Your Own Custom Keyboard Layout [For Noobs]

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READ THIS ENTIRE GUIDE BEFORE ASKING QUESTIONS. READ THIS ENTIRE GUIDE BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANYTHING. READ THIS ENTIRE GUIDE FOR ALL THE HELPFUL INFORMATION CONTAINED IN IT. READ THIS ENTIRE GUIDE EVEN IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

This guide is for anyone that would like to build their own custom keyboard with a customized layout with customized keys (hit one keyboard button and your entire email is filled in for you automatically). This method of hacking should work with other .apk files for similar endeavors. With this guide you should be able to create a custom keyboard based on the gingerbread keyboard. Read this entire guide before asking any questions. I have added information on the many things that have personally caused me errors. If you have problems with the program itself, post here asking for help, ask on the android developers's IRC channel, or read the FAQs posted about the different programs that must be used.

this is a windows 7 based guide; the only differences between W7 and other OS's is minor path changes and downloads (I don't think that android commander is available on Mac OSX)

Things that are required:
very basic commandline experience
APKtool
Signapk
android SDK installed and working (install all available packages if you do not know how to set up an emulator)
android commander -or- knowledge of how to install a custom .apk on your device
notepad -or- your favorite code editor
lots of debugging time, patience
an ability to navigate the above programs

**Common Commands**

1. apktool b <NAME OF DECOMPILED KEYBOARD FOLDER> <PATH LEADING TO YOUR FOLDER CONTAINING SIGNAPK (NAME THE FILE), READY TO COMPILE FOLDER>
2. java -jar signapk.jar testkey.x509.pem testkey.pk8 <NAMEOFFILE FROM ABOVE> <PATH TO YOUR ANDROID SDK TOOLS FOLDER>
3. adb install testsign.apk

#Protip: in Windows 7 (Vista?) hold the shift button as you right click in a folder to open a commandprompt in that directory

Command 1. is to be run from the directory holding your apk folder (do not go inside the decompiled apk folder; if you can see Android Manifest you've gone too far). The command will place the compiled apk folder into your signapk folder assuming you have set up the above commands correctly. As a side note, the compiled apk will be called "test.apk". If you want to decompile (go from an apk to "undone" folder just use "apktool d <NAME OF APK> <OUTPUT FOLDER NAME INCLUDING ITS DESIRED DIRECTORY {EX: c:\android-sdk\keyboard\gingerbredkeyboard}>

Command 2. will sign the apk file called "test.apk" and save the result in your tools folder inside your android sdk folder.

Command 3. will install the apk into your running emulator. This is optional since you can from here install the file onto your device to test things out. However, I highly recommend using the emulator because it is easier to deal with. This command will fail if your emulator has been left alone for a little while. Just do some sort of action in your emulated device to "wake it up" so that the command will find the running emulator. After you install the apk, you may need to delete the old apk before you install a newer version that you have created.

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Keyboard stuff

When you decompile the keyboard file, you'll see a bunch of folders, the main folders that you'll want to focus on are inside res\xml and res\values (res\drawable-Xdpi if you want to make a complete theme with new images). From here the xml files governing the keyboard layout should be readable by any xml editor (notepad). Some of my notes will be written below so you can use what I've discovered to generate your own code. As a quick note, the cases of letters count, you must be perfect in your xml code.

The xml files are all named with self explanatory names, just look down the list at the names and you should find what you're looking for.

values and xml folders with letters after it mean that those are aspects that are only going to work for a specific language; if you want to make global commands for any language on the keyboard use the xml files that do not have a suffix. From here you can be creative and hijack a language that you won't normally use and use it as your own personal keyboard with special keys and whatnot (a keyboard just for accented letters? personal word shortcuts?)

code examples:

android:keyLabel="Hi"
this line is what will show up on the keyboard key in question, as above, "Hi" will be printed on this key
android:popupCharacters="★"
this line is what will show up when you hold down the key in question, you will get options for ★ with this code; do not use commas to separate symbols/letters, each individual character will be it's own separate key
android:keyOutputText=";] " self explanitory, anything contained inside the quotes will be printed when the key is pressed, leave a space like I did after smilies so that you dont' have to hit the spacebar after using this key; see exceptions below
droid:keyEdgeFlags="left" is used in the <key> entry of anything on the left "edge" of a <row>
droid:keyEdgeFlags="right" same as above, but used on the rightmost key

EXCEPTIONS:

Certain characters are used in coding, if you don't enter them a special way, you will receive errors in your code when compiling or the key will simply not work. In order to use commands that "print" text with exceptions in them, prefix the exception with a "\". For example: android:keyOutputText="\@" will print the character "@". A list of known exceptions are listed below, there may be others. Special, special exceptions also exist where even prefixing it causes coding problems, in these cases, use its "name" in place of its actual character. For example: the ampersand character '&", you must use the code associated with it; see the "popup_punctuation.xml" file for some of these exceptions. There may be more exceptions that I have not come across. If you're having problems with your keyboard and cannot figure out why your key is not showing up correctly, try to treat it as an exception.

Characters that are exceptions:

#
@
?
"

IMPORTANT EXCEPTION:

I couldn't get the popup_comma.xml file to work with the above exceptions rule or with the keyoutputtext code

Putting it all together:

<Key android:keyLabel="\@G!" android:keyOutputText="cheval.de.jeanvaljean\@gmai l.com" android:keyEdgeFlags="left"/>

The above will draw a key that's labeled "@G!" that yields "cheval.de.jeanvaljean@gmail.com" that is also the leftmost tag in a given row. Personally, I have added similar code to the above so that I have keys for the handles "@gmail.com" and "@yahoo.com" (along with my personal email so I never have to type it out all the way ever again) to the period key on the keyboard (in xml "popup_punctuation.xml"). I have also tweaked the smilies on the enter key to my own personal smilies. Assuming you've read the above and have some minimal xml experience you can figure out the rest for yourself. There are many other things that I have left out code-wise that I found to be extremely easy to figure out just by browsing the source code. As a personal tip to you, I recommend highly that you use the emulator as it is far easier than pushing files to your phone, deleting them, blah blah blah.


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Have fun and good luck =]

Attached Files

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