Keyboard - Change Language Dynamically?

Question

When you open the Surface Keyboard is there a way to have the keyboard load other language symbols (Japanese, Araabic, etc) without changing the mode of the entire application to said language?

Answer 1

Yep, check from this link : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff727891.aspx

reagrds

serge

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Your knowledge is enhanced by that of others.

Answer 2

Ahh well that answered my question, but for a no.

The SurfaceKeyboard class provides a way for users to type text on an on-screen keyboard. Dynamic changes to the input language and Input Method Editor (IME) language state are not reflected in the layout of the on-screen keyboard. For example, if your application changes the input language by using theInputLanguageManager class, the characters that SurfaceKeyboard generates for certain keys will be altered. However, the characters that appear in the on-screen keyboard will not be updated.

Meaning that even if I changed it, the text it generates will be different, but the keyboard itself would still show Latin characters.

Unless of course I'm mistaken?

Answer 3

Best try is to set on your windows to add for instance Russian keyboard.

Then start any SUrface application where you can show up embeded key board and check what the layout looks like

regards

serge

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Your knowledge is enhanced by that of others.

Answer 4

Ahh it seems when you add a language to the Window device the Surface's Keyboard adds a dropdown to change languages much like you would see in taskbar, which is perfect because the main app can still be English.<o:p></o:p>

Thanks a lot for your help.<o:p></o:p>

Answer 5

In correction to the above. While in Surface Mode the on-screen keyboard is not the same as the one in Windows and does not provide the ability to switch languages.

It is possible to have the keyboard language seperate from UI, but that is part of the configuration and cannot be done on the fly.

As well the Surface only support 10 or so languages (not including the Arabic one I mention above) - I'm currently on the road of contacting MSFT for getting Arabic support. 

Failing that or for others, possible options is to create a keyboard item where button presses create Ascii codes in forms and to change flow direction of textboxes/labels/etc.