17 replies to this topic

[MessagEase]

Hello,

Please forgive me if by any chance this post may not belong here.

I am a dev and our users tell us that our keyboard software has a problem, and it seems that this problem is only limited to Razr. Several of our users, including a member of this forum, SpyderMan, were diligent in helping us. We don't have a Razr in our test lab yet.

The software we have created is an alternative keyboard, designed and optimized soley for touch screens. (It's called MessagEase and it's available on Google Play now).

MessagEase works well on all devices. On Razrs, and when used on web forms and with our prediction option on, the textfield misbehaves. It overwrites the subsequent characters. If deselect word prediction, everything is fine.

So the problem is limited to ICS + Razr and the way they interact with innputConnection.

(If you try MessagEase, please be forewarned that it is VERY different from QWERTY. It takes a bit of patience and playing the training game, MessagEase Game, to get used to it.)

So here are my questions: Are there resources available to help with this issue here? This may be an omen of other problems. Is there a way to get a loaner to test and track this problem? Has anyone seen a similar misbehaving with other alternative keyboards on Razr?

Any thought, feedback, help, or pointer is greatly appreciated.

Best,

Saied Nesbat,
MessagEase Dev Team

[VantenKiest]

I will try and get our devs to take alook at this .. thanks for coming and asking and yes this belongs in the help section here since you are asking for help.

[SpyderMan]

Hi, everyone, I want to let you all know that Saied is a very good example of a responsive, helpful dev & anyone who can help w/the solution of this apparent Razr related issue - great b/c Saied gives a lot to others.

He & I have worked extensively on this minor issue & it does seem to be Razr related. The pluses far outweigh this one side issue & the free MessagEase has been my daily (alternative) KB driver for years & I can tell everyone that the robust feature set makes the effort to get used to a new text entry paradigm more than worth it & besides the game, there is built-into the app a feature-by-feature tutorial that facilitates getting the full benefit out of MessageEase.

I've used it on all of my Palm devices & can't imagine doing without the simplified keyboard setup & feature set
on my Maxx.

Thanks to all in advance, SpyderMan

[MessagEase]

Thank you SMod!

With a lot of help from Seeker613, we were able to pinpoint the problem to web forms or web related textfields. The intriguing thing is that NONE of these symptoms can be recreated on other devices with ICS. It MIGHT be some pecurliarity of Razr. But at this point we don't know.

Best,

Saied

[marker2001]

Saied -

Thanks for the post here. I've been having this issue for a while now. My work around is to use the voice to text option on forms which works well unless the envorinment is noisy.

I just found this post - here's what I did - I cleared the Messagease Cache on my Razr and restarted the program. I then went in and made sure the three options under the Word Prediction were deselected.

After returning to a web form that I knew did not work with MessagEase, I tried it again. Having the word prediction turned off did not help.
I am running Launcher Pro Plus and the Dolphin browser in case that matters. Otherwise I'm pretty much stock.

< +5 min of tinkering later>

OK - I noticed that even with the word prediction turned off, the bar above the keyboard that shows the predicted words was still showing and printing leters as I typed. After reading in the settings area on how this panel is turned off, (swipe down on the hand) the form now works fine.

For me, having the Word Prediction on or off in the settings has no effect on the textfield misbehaving issue. However, having the word prediction "Preview Panel" visible or not visible seems to be the answer.

I hope this helps with the debugging. Word prediction is great when you're using big words...

- Mark

[MessagEase]

Hello Mark,

Thanks for your report.

The preview panel will be activated for either or both Word prediction, or Macro. If either of them is enabled (checkbox under their settings) then the PP (preview Panel) will be marked as active and will open by default. But, as you discovered, even if PP is activated, you can drag up/down on Hand to open/close it locally.

The problem we are having is limited to web forms and ICS. It is caused by our Word Prediction mechanism trying to get the word behind the cursor to evaluate and call macro/prediction. The same code works fine on pre ICS AND on our several ICS devices. So far that it pops up in Razr and Galaxy S3, but no other devices.

I was hoping that I get some of Razr's devs to take a look at this and give us a hint as to what the differences could be. Bu so far, we have not heard back from them.

If you want to try our future attempts, please send me and email and I'll put you on our list of testers for this problem. (support @ exideas dot com).

Thanks.

[n00dle]

If someone can link a problem page/form, I would try it out using ThumbKeyboard. Since the OP was curious about other alternative keyboards. Best as I can tell from the above descriptions I have not had this problem. It should also be noted that I typically use Dolphin HD, does that matter for testing purposes?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

[SpyderMan]

nOOdle;

I'm using Dolphin HD as well on ICS & when I just tried to enter text here w/the PP open, the 1st letter entered fine, but when I tried to enter any other letters, each subsequent letter erased each previous letter.

If you can open the PP & type here, w/out the behavior described above, please post here about it!

seeker

[marker2001]

I forgot to post the site, as some sites do work. The log in form for this forum has the problem with the preview pane. The site i used for testing is

Please Login or Register to see this Hidden Content

I hope this helps.

[MessagEase]

Thanks Mark,

I just used both Android's browser and Dolphin on this very site (on our Galaxy tab with ICS 4.0.3)

neither of the browsers, on neither of the boxes (username or p@$$word) invoked the problem. ME come on and it correctly senses the boxes to be of natures requiring the Preview Panel (PP) to remain closed. This is the correct operation and consistent with the standard keyboard.

Our problem, obviously, is that so far we have been unable to reproduce this bug. If only we can set up a device-os-site combination that rliably reprodues this...

Thanks for your help.

Best,

Saied

[vtwinbmx]

What if I gave you a apk that you can decompile and check over. It could be a good start or pm me a link and I'll decompile your apk and see what is difference then the razr apk we use

[MessagEase]

Thanks vt.
the latest code is at:

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The difference seems to be in the way razr reports EditorInfo. There's got to be something that we are missing and only ICS+Razr strictly enforces.

Thanks for your help. Any hint is appreciated.

[vtwinbmx]

Thanks vt.
the latest code is at:

Please Login or Register to see this Hidden Content

The difference seems to be in the way razr reports EditorInfo. There's got to be something that we are missing and only ICS+Razr strictly enforces.

Thanks for your help. Any hint is appreciated.

Thanks for the link I'll decompile and see what different side by side with razr ics keyboard should be able to see it really quickly

[MessagEase]

I just updated the code with a few changes in the inputType detection part. The new code (v. 6.9.0) is at the link that I provided earlier. The older apk is at:

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Thanks.

[marker2001]

Sorry, 6.9.0 isn't a fix for the preview pane issue.

[MessagEase]

Thanks for all your help. If you can indulge a bit more, I think we're about to lick this.

I put some debugging pop up in the code. The apk is under the same link as before:

Please Login or Register to see this Hidden Content

the version is 6.9.1 now

Each time you tap on a text field or change to a new one, a popup like this will appear: MEDebug 10-2-180385-1

If you please send me the string of numbers for the misbehaving ones.
If you know that this problem happens in more than one place, it'll be great to get more than one code with all the misbehaving ones.

finally, a few codes of places where it works without a problem will also be helpful.


Thanks.

Saied

[marker2001]

OK. Here goes.
In the field where i am typing this text, I get 10-1-180385-1. This has the preview problem
On thatdailydeal.com, in the login area, the email field gives me 100-2-65697-1. The password field gives me 100-2-225-1. The coupon code field shows 100-2-161-1. I get 100-2-161-1 on weather.com too.

All these areas have the preview pane problem.

The Google.com search field shows 100-2-524449-1 and with word predict on, the preview pane will not come up at all. The keyboard just resizes. Same for amazon.com's search field with a code of 100-2-65697-1.


I hope this helps...

- Mark

[MessagEase]

Hello Mark,

Sorry for my delay in responding.
Thanks for the info. Yours and some similar feedback from Seeker613 made it possible for me to pinpoint the problem area, the inconsistency of Android ICS/pre ICS in handling Strings. I think we are very close to a working update.

Best,

Saied