[Scummvm-devel] Word completion for AGI games

[Max Horn]

Am 12.04.2007 um 01:25 schrieb Neil Millstone:

> Hi,
>
> So is nobody going to say whether I should add this to OSystem or  
> just put inside a DS port specific define in the AGI engine?  I  
> think a generic word completion interface that could be used by  
> many ports, and on engines other than AGI would be more useful, but  
> I'll put it in as a custom thing if nobody else is interested.

I am not quite sure I understand why this needs to be in OSystem,  
though. From what I saw, what you did was essentially write a virtual  
keyboard which is shown on the second screen; something we already  
support. This QWERTY keyboard then is used to enter text with  
prediction support. It should be possible to extend the predictive  
input dialog in AGI to work with QWERTY input, too, although I fail  
to see the point (part of why T9 and similar predictors are so fast  
is that you only need to choose out of 9 keys, which is a *lot*  
faster than doing the same with 30 or 50 keys).


> My interface words better than the predictive text one that's  
> already there for the DS version, as there's plenty of screen space  
> for a Qwerty keyboard, something that's more familiar/quicker than  
> T9 mobile phone text input.

My experience is this: I type a lot faster on a real QWERTY keyboard  
than I can do T9, but I am a lot faster with T9 than I am with a pen- 
controlled on-screen virtual keyboard :-).

Anyway -- is there *any* engine which would benefit much from this,  
other than AGI? I am not aware of one, so I'd say, let's not add  
OSystem APIs until we know that we need them. In particular, right  
now it would seem more rewarding to me to add code to the AGI input  
dialog which (optionally?) enables a virtual keyboard (maybe with a  
#ifdef DS), *if* we think it makes sense...


Cheers,
Max