Android or other tablet keyboard

[nathanstenzel]

I tried out the Android client. I could not get the keyboard up in console mode. There is always some trick to things in the Android client, it seems. That sort of thing will just piss off and drive away potential new players. When will we get a keyboard summoning icon? For any device without a working physical keyboard, that would be very helpful.

https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/on-screen-keyboard-change/19216
This really old article says that it should be really easy to just pull up a virtual keyboard in SDL.

 

Quote

Calling SDL_StartTextInput() will automatically show the on-screen keyboard
if it’s available.
Calling SDL_StopTextInput() will automatically hide the on-screen keyboard
if it’s available.
There is a new API function SDL_IsTextInputActive() which will return
whether text input is currently active.
Text input is disabled by default, you must call SDL_StartTextInput() when
you are ready to accept text input.

 

[bluap]

That's the function used in the android client.  There's a new version that improved the text entry.  Taping an input field opens the keyboard.  In game window and console mode long pressing the input areas opens the keyboard.  In full console mode you can also swipe right to open the keyboard.  The new client puts the input field at the top of the screen and does not write over the console text.