Keyboard

Keyboard Proof of Concept

This directory is for custom keyboard proofs of concept.

The custom keyboards make use of the Captive Web View library. Captive Web View is an Open Source project from VMware. This repository has the Captive Web View repository as a Git submodule.

Notes

• The iOS project has a workspace. This means that you should in general always open the workspace CustomKeyboard.xcworkspace file, and never open the project.

  Contents of the workspace are as follows.

  • Keyboard, the Xcode project for this proof of concept.
    • UserInterface, the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
    • ContainingApplication, required to package the keyboard.
    • Extension, the actual custom keyboard code.
  • CaptiveWebView, reference to the submodule.

• ToDo: Address the warning about Captive Web View being unsafe for extensions.

  https://stackoverflow.com/a/48863451/7657675

• ToDo: Add the equivalent of the following code from the Xcode sample.

  self.nextKeyboardButton.isHidden = !self.needsInputModeSwitchKey
  

  The sample code sets the flag in the viewWillLayoutSubviews but that's questionable.

• ToDo: Raise an issue on Captive Web View about the retain cycle and message handler.

• ToDo: Maybe change the Captive Web View load() return value in case the underlying load returns a null WKNavigation.

• ToDo: Maybe add support for directory hierarchy in the Bundle but shared so that the iOS keyboard JS can import from its browser/ directory without having to be in the same directory.

• Instructions for custom keyboards for iOS are in the Apple developer documentation archive here:
  https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/ExtensibilityPG/CustomKeyboard.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014214-CH16-SW1

• It seems like the Xcode debugger always crashes a second or two after the custom keyboard opens. If the keyboard is re-opened then it runs OK but you can't, for example, get any logging output in the Xcode console.

  Another way to side-load is to run the containing application.

• Instructions for adding Captive Web View for iOS are in its repository, here:
  https://github.com/vmware/captive-web-view/tree/master/foriOS

  You might have to build the Captive Web View target separately before you can build the custom keyboard.

License

Copyright (c) 2020 The ACE Centre-North, UK registered charity 1089313. MIT licensed, see https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.