Qt Virtual Keyboard 1.3 Released - Adding Japanese and Korean Language Support

Today, we have released a new version 1.3 of the Qt Virtual Keyboard. As new features, we are adding support for Japanese and Korean along with support for Windows desktop.

A big use case over the years for Qt has been in creating embedded devices with an interactive use interface. More and more embedded and industrial devices are moving towards touch screens as their primary interface. As external input devices are no longer used, the device creator often needs to leverage virtual keyboard for text input. Although a virtual keyboard may seem like a trivial UI component, it is actually quite complex. When you think about modern keyboards, input mechanisms, customization, scalability and especially requirements around internationalization & localization, a virtual keyboard can easily become a very complex challenge that could hinder the whole usability of your device if not made properly.

Focus of Qt is to shorten the time-to-market on all aspects of development workflow, so over the past years, we have developed the Qt Virtual Keyboard to provide a full ready-made solution for Qt powered devices. Besides just touch-based screens it also expands to other input mechanisms, like 2/5-navigation (joystick/scrollwheel). The Qt Virtual Keyboard is available with a commercial Enterprise license at no additional cost. Using the Qt Virtual Keyboard in your Qt based devices is easy and we are continuously making sure it works nicely with the new releases of Qt.

Key features of the Qt Virtual Keyboard include:

  • Customizable keyboard layouts and styles with dynamic switching
  • Predictive text input with word selection list support
  • Character preview and alternative character view
  • Automatic capitalization and space insertion
  • Scalability to different resolutions
  • Support for different character sets (Latin, Simplified Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, ...)
  • Support for most common input languages (see list below), with possibility to easily extend the language support
  • Left-to-right and right-to-left input
  • Hardware key support for 2-way and 5-way navigation
  • Sound feedback
  • Cross-platform functionality

The Qt Virtual Keyboard version 1.3 supports the following languages:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Danish
  • English
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Hindi
  • Italian
  • Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji)
  • Korean
  • Norwegian
  • Persian/Farsi
  • Polish
  • Portugese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish

If the language you need is not supported, you can add an additional language (see documentation for Adding New Keyboard Layouts).

To see more about Qt Virtual Keyboard, check out the documentation or watch the video about the core features of the Qt Virtual Keyboard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeDZLGIwbM

The new Virtual Keyboard 1.3 is available for device creation customers who have a commercial Enterprise license via the online installer as well as from the Qt Account. If you are not a customer yet, you can evaluate Qt for Device Creation with our free 30 day trial.


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