[Added to Roadmap] Virtual keyboard

[bigdriver]

I'm currently working on importing some content to give CMC a shake down and pardon if I missed this somewhere but is there virtual keyboard support. This would be like the search feature in the MyMovies interface where you can use the mouse (which I guess would be the remote) to type in characters. If this isn't available can alpha searches be done by the remote?

Saw the thread on mouse support and by all means if you're counting votes, and I do understand how easy it is for others to heap work on someone else, mouse support is my preference. See how easy that was....for me (grin).

Thanks.

[Pauven]

There is partial support for using the numeric keypad on most remotes to speed-jump to a letter when looking at Movies.

For example, you could press 5 three times (5 j k) to jump to K.

This only works on the movie covers, and only when sorted alphabetically.

I plan to make this more powerful in the future, and to expand this to the Music Library, but for right now it is Movie covers sorted alphabetically only.

I also plan to add a virtual keyboard to the Search, which is what I believe you are asking for. As of right now, it is keyboard only. While the concept is simple, the programming is surprisingly hard. My first coding attempt didn't work very well, so I disabled it.

I've also thought about doing something similar to the XBox's virtual keyboard (if you've every used it with the gamepad), though I'm not sure if it will work will with just 4 directions on the remote, vs. 8 directions on a gamepad.

Thanks for letting me know what you want from CMC, that helps me set programming priorities.

Paul

[bigdriver]

Paul - And thank you very much for listening. I know first hand how easy it is for end users to just say "well, just do this and that" without understanding of the underlying complexity. Believe it or not, and this is a true story, my very first experience with that was with word wrap on a VERY early word processor under CP/M. Man, it sure did seem easy when somebody asked for it....

In any event my primary usage is on the couch or laying in bed and the fewer accessories laying around for the dog to walk on the better.

[Pauven]

the fewer accessories laying around for the dog to walk on the better.

I love it! Reminds me of a few years ago, I was visiting my sister in the mountains, and she had been babysitting my mother's dog, Sadie. She asked me to bring Sadie back to our Mom, and I said sure, not having any idea what I was in for.

Sadie wouldn't sit still, kind of a nervous rider, and in my 2-seater she kept trying to climb into my lap. Not a huge deal, but...

The center console has the hazard lights button right at paw level, and Sadie kept stepping on it for nearly the entirety of the 2 hour drive in her attempt to get in my lap. I'm sure all the other drivers around me were quite confused as to why my hazards kept going on and off.

By the way, welcome to the forum and CMC, and feel free to ask for help.

Paul

[bigdriver]

I swear dogs have some kind of sensor embedded in their paws that hones in on stuff they can mess with...

I did do some thinking which is rare and I'm still getting over the headache but I had totally forgotten about the built in Windows on-screen keyboard. It can be invoked via the control panel/ease of access center or by the program name of OSK.EXE.

I set it to run automatically at boot and then alt-tab to bring it to the fore in CMC and with a little fiddling it did work.

Perhaps a button within CMC to invoke OSK?

Should probably start a new thread but hey, what's a forum without thread drift. The reason I'm looking at alternatives to WMC is that when My Movies made a change after 5.00 search didn't fare well. I just tested the latest pre-release and when I enter a character in the search box it takes 56 seconds for the matches to appear.

Apparently my problem is the number of titles. Almost 9k movies and 6k TV Episodes. Have you tried CMC on very large data sets?

Thanks.

[Pauven]

I did do some thinking which is rare and I'm still getting over the headache but I had totally forgotten about the built in Windows on-screen keyboard. It can be invoked via the control panel/ease of access center or by the program name of OSK.EXE.

I set it to run automatically at boot and then alt-tab to bring it to the fore in CMC and with a little fiddling it did work.

Perhaps a button within CMC to invoke OSK?

The Windows OSK is actually what I first thought of when you originally posted. I'm looking to add the capability to launch external apps and URLS, and I imagine it would work equally well to launch OSK.exe. Depending upon how well that works, I might add a dedicated OSK launcher button on the search panel. That's a good idea, thanks.

The reason I'm looking at alternatives to WMC is that when My Movies made a change after 5.00 search didn't fare well. I just tested the latest pre-release and when I enter a character in the search box it takes 56 seconds for the matches to appear.

Apparently my problem is the number of titles. Almost 9k movies and 6k TV Episodes. Have you tried CMC on very large data sets?

I do have users with large datasets of 5k-10k, though I don't recall any of them ever mentioning how search performed. I worked very hard to make search extremely fast - fast enough that I call it Real-Time Search. As you type each letter of the search, the covers are filtered in real-time.

I suppose if you have a very large collection, and a very slow computer, it might be a bit slower than real-time, but for me even on a 7-year old laptop and 1500 titles, it seems near real-time, so I think your results would be good too.

This is one of those benefits I occasionally mention of using the meta-data files versus using the My Movies API. With the API, the search would have to be submitted to the MM engine, and it would probably be real slow. But with CMC using the meta-data files and maintaining its own database (in RAM), I can parse through thousands of results in milliseconds to provide real-time search.

I hope you report back on how search works for you.

Paul

[bigdriver]

Good news on the search, thanks and nope, nothing especially slow. Granted it an older machine but a dual Xeon X5650 with 48Gb of ram for the WS2011 with the database on a SSD and a FX-8350 based box for the client.

Will let you know, working through some conversion issues that might keep me busy for a while.

[breazile]

Utilizing the Windows OSK or something like that would be great. I have 2 Surface tablets running CMC that my kids use. Since there is no touch support it is a pain using it because you have to attach a keyboard. Having an on screen keyboard, or at least 4 navigation buttons with an enter button would be great. Full touch support would be awesome, but a lot of work I would assume.

Regards,
Jon

[Jamie]

Paul has slowly been adding mouse support. That should work for touch too. Just be patient

Jamie

[Pauven]

All the new stuff I've added for v2.2 is touch enabled, so I don't have to go back and rework it. I've also slowly been adding touch in a few areas.

My goal is to have the entire GUI touch-enabled. But that may be a few releases down the road.

I'll be targeting the high-impact areas first. Things like the top icon bar and the mode bar. That way you could at least navigate to a button that launches the on-screen keyboard.

Having an on screen keyboard, or at least 4 navigation buttons with an enter button would be great.

That is an excellent idea! I could add a config parameter to turn an on-screen remote on/off, and if the remote had the 4 navigation arrows, OK, and Back, that would cover 95% of what you would want to do in CMC. I'll look into this.

Thanks for the suggestion Jon!

Paul