[Q] QWERTZ -> QWERTY on a Desire Z

[bonstio]

I recently obtain a Desire Z and immediately rooted and installed various ROMS. All is working great.

The problem is the hardware keyboard is a qwertz one (I bought the phone in Switzerland) and not a qwerty one. I want to the switch the keymap around such that z prints y and vice versa. I've set the keyboard setting to UK and US English but it has no effect on the h/w k/b.

I'm familiar with adb but don't know which files to hack on. Please can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

 

[snudel]

the hardware keyboard layout is fixed.
the setting in menu is only changing the software keyboard.

 

[bonstio]

Thanks for the reply.

But I don't buy it. This can be changed somehow and someone knows how. I'll keep hacking and post back with any useful results.

 

[mputtr]

I have a sneaking feeling that it should be able to be cooked in. Even on Winmo, you can change your keyboard's layout, i don't see why android, a platform that is much more advanced, would not be able to do that.

 

[xanth]

This is just a hunch, but you probably just need to modify /system/usr/keylayout/vision-keypad.kl and possibly /system/usr/keylayout/qwerty.kl (they're both plain text files, but with unix line endings)

On a UK QWERTY Desire Z:

Key 21 is Y
Key 44 is Z

If your files have them round the other way, it should just be a simply case of swapping them and rebooting (nandroid first though!)

 

[bonstio]

Great. I tried those files and no good so I went for the heavy handed approach after mounting system as rw and su'ing:

cd /system/usr/keylayout
sed -i s/Y/--/ *
sed -i s/Z/Y/ *
sed -i s/--/Z/ *

Job done! Thanks for your help

 

[DRuMah]

For the almost-beginners:
Connect your phone in sync-mode, run cmd, navigate do adb directory (search forum for adb if you didn't get it) and type:

adb shell
su
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/usr/keylayout
sed -i s/Y/--/ *
sed -i s/Z/Y/ *
sed -i s/--/Z/ *

Best regards to all

 

[dohaa32]

For the almost-beginners:
Connect your phone in sync-mode, run cmd, navigate do adb directory (search forum for adb if you didn't get it) and type:

adb shell
su
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/usr/keylayout
sed -i s/Y/--/ *
sed -i s/Z/Y/ *
sed -i s/--/Z/ *

Best regards to all

shall be rooted to run these?
am getting access denied!!!!!11111

 

[Pickx]

Well obviously you need root to write to /system/ partition.

 

[migueluli]

For the almost-beginners:
Connect your phone in sync-mode, run cmd, navigate do adb directory (search forum for adb if you didn't get it) and type:

adb shell
su
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/usr/keylayout
sed -i s/Y/--/ *
sed -i s/Z/Y/ *
sed -i s/--/Z/ *

Best regards to all

Hi, I've tried this on my Desire Z and it indeed switched the 'y' and 'z' character keys on the hardware keyboard.

The downside is that is also changes the corresponding FN symbols (i.e. number six character '6' and underscore character '_').

Do you know wether it is possible to switch the letters but not the symbols?

 

[bonstio]

I don't know about the symbols. My guess is you have to live with it. I do. Yes, it's annoying but IMO about 10% as annoying as the original problem.

I would also add that on ICS, the above changes b0rked the keyboard (probably due to the sed script replacing stuff it ought not have). So I used this instead:

adb shell
su
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
cd /system/usr/keylayout
sed -i s/'key 44 '/'key XX '/g *
sed -i s/'key 21 '/'key 44 '/g *
sed -i s/'key XX '/'key 21 '/g *
adb reboot

If I have to do this one more time, I'm going to make an app.....

 

[migueluli]

In the end I managed to fix the symbols by editing some hex file I can't recall right now. I can check it out later and post what I did if anyone is interested.

Couldn't come up with a simple command like yours though, and edited it by hand by downloading to the PC and uploading after modification. It can probably be done using regular expressions, but they are not my biggest strength

 

[bonstio]

Good job I'm certainly interested. If you could post specific details that would be great!

Cheers.

 

[migueluli]

Sorry for the delay, but I've had quite a busy week...

The file that I modified was /system/usr/keychars/vision-keypad-ger.kcm.bin My phone was bought from Germany, so if you have a different region phone the specific file you need to edit might be a different one.

I edited it on Windows with xvi32 hex editor (GHex on Ubuntu works fine as well), and the nice thing about it is that you can see the hexadeciman values on the left and their ASCII counterparts on the right. It was quite easy to find the sections 'yY__' and 'zZ66'. You only need to change those to 'yY66' and 'zZ__' and voilá.

If you already have your 'y' and 'z' keys swapped (but the symbols out of place), you should changed change the '6's and '_'s. If you have the letters on their original positions you should then change the letters instead, and the symbols will stay where they are.

Hope that helps.

 

[bonstio]

Great job

 

[needubad]

little help

Sorry for the delay, but I've had quite a busy week...

The file that I modified was /system/usr/keychars/vision-keypad-ger.kcm.bin My phone was bought from Germany, so if you have a different region phone the specific file you need to edit might be a different one.

I edited it on Windows with xvi32 hex editor (GHex on Ubuntu works fine as well), and the nice thing about it is that you can see the hexadeciman values on the left and their ASCII counterparts on the right. It was quite easy to find the sections 'yY__' and 'zZ66'. You only need to change those to 'yY66' and 'zZ__' and voilá.

If you already have your 'y' and 'z' keys swapped (but the symbols out of place), you should changed change the '6's and '_'s. If you have the letters on their original positions you should then change the letters instead, and the symbols will stay where they are.

Hope that helps.

hi. how you manage to change permission of file vision-keypad-ger.kcm.bin ?
I tried with adb, it's not working.

 

[migueluli]

hi. how you manage to change permission of file vision-keypad-ger.kcm.bin ?
I tried with adb, it's not working.

You need to mount the /system partition as rw to be able to modify that file. You can do that with

 mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

while logged as root in the adb shell.

If you already did that and are still unable to modify the file then I'm afraid I cannot be of much help

 

[HoradricCZ]

I'd like to do an oposite thing: QWERTY --> QWERTZ
for us, noobs, could someone please simillar commands for this operation?
thanks in advance

 

[kbeezie]

I'd like to do an oposite thing: QWERTY --> QWERTZ
for us, noobs, could someone please simillar commands for this operation?
thanks in advance

... for noobs you'd think you would just flip the placement of Z and Y.