No keyboard in iOS

[ahope1]

JSBeeb doesn't display a keyboard if it's running in iOS, so you can't actually use it in any meaningful way!

[mattgodbolt]

I'm pretty sure this'll need a custom keyboard as the iPhone one won't work well with the BBC layout, nor (I think) will it fire the needed key down/key up events.

[ahope1]

A custom keyboard is what Reuben Scratton seems to have implemented in emBeeb:

http://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10345&p=135384#p135264

But his native iOS emulator (iBeeb), which he's now abandoned because Apple rejected it in App Review, did somehow manage to use the native iOS keyboard (as one of the controller options, another of which was a custom Beeb-style keyboard).

[MrSimmo]

Hi Matt,

Just adding to this - this would be fantastic if it were possible to implement. Maybe there could be two options 1 - Use a custom keyboard as emBeeb does, 2 - Somehow trigger the iOS keyboard in Javascript so that the iPad pops up its own software keyboard, this would be beneficial as there is likely a trigger command in Javascript which would work cross-platform.

Do you think this would be possible?

Cheers, Andy

[mattgodbolt]

Hi!

Custom is a fair amount of work (and hence I've shied away from it). For "somehow trigger the iOS keyboard"... if I knew the "Somehow" it'd already be done!

Any help appreciated! I'm no mobile web expert...

[MrSimmo]

Me neither unfortunately; do these make any sense?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46776630/how-activate-ios-keyboard-focusing-on-an-input-after-clicking-in-a-button

http://jsfiddle.net/jalbertbowdenii/P3uY8/

https://gist.github.com/cemerson/3907428

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4609765/manually-triggering-the-iphone-ipad-ipod-keyboard-from-javascript

To be honest, Im not sure whether they're any use. Let me know :-)

[MrSimmo]

Not sure if this is any help btw ref an on screen keyboard (this is obviously a first step rather than a BBC layout mimic) https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-a-keyboard-with-css-and-jquery--net-5774

[ahope1]

Just wanted to mention that you can now control JSBeeb from a physical Bluetooth keyboard on iOS -- or at least you can on my stock non-jailbroken iPad Pro, which is what it just occurred to me to test with.

Obviously it would still be great if an on-screen software iOS keyboard could be implemented too, but at least the use of a hardware Bluetooth keyboard is now a sort of stopgap solution for iOS.