Switching Keyboards on Om 2007.2

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To switch from the multitap keyboard to the matchbox or Openmoko keyboard, do the following (from the terminal or an ssh session with DISPLAY=:0.0):

ipkg remove -force-depends multitap-pad
ipkg install matchbox-keyboard-inputmethod
ipkg install matchbox-keyboard-im
ipkg install matchbox-keyboard-applet
ipkg install openmoko-keyboard

this doesn't work on current systems. opkg is now the installer, but more importantly none of the matchbox-keyboard packages are around.


If you want to keep the multitap keyboard, but also be able to start up the matchbox-keyboard, you can follow these ugly instructions:

First you must install matchbox-keyboard.

ipkg install matchbox-keyboard

Do the following (from the terminal or an ssh session with DISPLAY=:0.0):

  1. killall multitap-pad
  2. matchbox-keyboard > /dev/null 2>&1 &

(If you type the above commands with multitap, you have to leave off the redirection of matchbox-keyboard output, since several of the keys you need are missing.)

Caveats: When you start the matchbox-keyboard, it stays up all the time. This will (among other things) prevent you from unlocking, since the keyboard covers the openmoko logo at the bottom of the lock screen. You will need to:

  1. nohup multitap-pad -d &
  2. killall matchbox-keyboard

to close it down, and at least get the matchbox keyboard going again. You should do that any time you're going to leave the neo alone for any length of time, so you can unlock it later.

To make sure you don't end up removing all your keyboard input capability, you can create a new .desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ for starting and closing the keyboard. This is pretty easy to do by copying and editing an existing .desktop file.

Personal tools

To switch from the multitap keyboard to the matchbox or Openmoko keyboard, do the following (from the terminal or an ssh session with DISPLAY=:0.0):

ipkg remove -force-depends multitap-pad
ipkg install matchbox-keyboard-inputmethod
ipkg install matchbox-keyboard-im
ipkg install matchbox-keyboard-applet
ipkg install openmoko-keyboard

this doesn't work on current systems. opkg is now the installer, but more importantly none of the matchbox-keyboard packages are around.


If you want to keep the multitap keyboard, but also be able to start up the matchbox-keyboard, you can follow these ugly instructions:

First you must install matchbox-keyboard.

ipkg install matchbox-keyboard

Do the following (from the terminal or an ssh session with DISPLAY=:0.0):

  1. killall multitap-pad
  2. matchbox-keyboard > /dev/null 2>&1 &

(If you type the above commands with multitap, you have to leave off the redirection of matchbox-keyboard output, since several of the keys you need are missing.)

Caveats: When you start the matchbox-keyboard, it stays up all the time. This will (among other things) prevent you from unlocking, since the keyboard covers the openmoko logo at the bottom of the lock screen. You will need to:

  1. nohup multitap-pad -d &
  2. killall matchbox-keyboard

to close it down, and at least get the matchbox keyboard going again. You should do that any time you're going to leave the neo alone for any length of time, so you can unlock it later.

To make sure you don't end up removing all your keyboard input capability, you can create a new .desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ for starting and closing the keyboard. This is pretty easy to do by copying and editing an existing .desktop file.