Soft Keypad for Nokia 7650

Soft Keypad : F.A.Q. and Tips
( last update : 30 dec 02 )

Predictive text input (T9)

"In T9 mode, I can see the virtual keypad and select letters, but I can see only numbers in the upper window. What is wrong?". Answer: nothing wrong! This is the normal way for Soft Keypad. All the characters of a word entered in T9 mode are stored in the form of key numbers in the upper window ("2" for abc, "3" for def,...), until the word is complete and you press the joystick to mean "OK". Then the key numbers are sent to the application in the background and the word is formed.

Changing profile

In normal operation, one way to change profile is to press the On/Off button of your phone: a menu pops up, from which you can either switch off the phone, or change the profile, scrolling to the profile you want to activate and pressing "OK" to confirm, either with the "OK" softkey, or with the joystick. When Soft Keypad is running in the background, confirmation with the joystick does not work properly, and you must press the "OK" softkey, not the joystick.

Soft Keypad slows down my phone?

When Soft Keypad is "waiting" in the background, each time you press the joystick ("click"), this event is "captured" by Soft Keypad. This in itself does not take time. But Soft Keypad must wait a little bit (approx 0.4 sec), and retain this event, before it can decide if this click was a single click or the first part of a double click. If no second click is received, Soft Keypad "forwards" the initial click to the application running in the foreground. Otherwise it pops up its appropriate virtual keyboard. The impression of a "slow system" comes from this waiting time after each click.

Fortunately, Soft Keypad contains a feature, which helps reducing this effect significantly: the "exclusion list". This is a list of applications, from which you will never want to call Soft Keypad, or call it very seldom. If an application is on this list, and a joystick click is done in this application, this click will always be forwarded immediately, without the 0.4 seconds delay. You can add or remove applications from the list with Options > Info > Exclusion list. Note that when an application is on the list you can still call Soft Keypad from it, with the usual long press on the Menu key of the phone.

Some applications are put on the exclusion list automatically by the application at startup: these are JoyCalc, Calculator, Camera, and also Menu (from version 1.12 of Soft Keypad).

AM:PM in a time editor

When the cursor is in a time editor, Soft Keypad pops up in Numbers mode. A dot at the end of the number entered in the time editor toggles the AM/PM selector: assume that you are creating a Meeting entry in Calendar and the default time for new meetings is 8:00AM. If you want to set the meeting time at 11:30AM, you will simply enter "1130" in the upper window, but if you want to set it at 4:15PM, you will enter "0415." in the upper window. The dot does the job... If you want to change the time back to 9:30AM, you will use a dot again, and enter "0930.".

Typing a word with an initial capital Letter (T9 mode)

"Type" all the letters of the word into the Soft Keypad upper window, and press Options > Abc instead of pressing the joystick.

Typing a dot at the end of a sentence

In T9 mode, a space is automatically added at the end of each word entered. If you want to end a sentence with a dot, you can enter this dot as a single "word", after you have entered the last word of the sentence. But this will leave an undesired space between the last word and the dot. You can erase this space with the command Options > Delete(C) of Soft Keypad, but there is a quicker solution: enter the dot as the last character of the last word, before pressing OK. Instead of typing "tee" then OK, then "." and OK again, and go back one character to erase the space, you can simply type "tee." and OK (note: when you type "tee.", the upper window of Soft Keypad displays "8331"...).

Normal text input: languages and character sets

Each language version of Soft Keypad installs its own keyboard and character set for normal text input. Language versions available are presently: English, German, Finnish, French, Hungarian and Spanish. If the "Phone language" (as set in Menu > Tools > Settings > Phone > General) is one of these, it is automatically selected when Soft Keypad is installed. Otherwise you must select the installation language of Soft Keypad in the list. Note that the keyboard for normal text input works satisfactorily if the installation language of Soft Keypad and the "Writing language" of the phone are the same (the "Writing language" is also set in Menu > Tools > Settings > Phone > General). Otherwise there may be some errors.

In some cases it is also possible to have Soft Keypad installed in one language and the keyboard and character set in another language. Ask Kylom.

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