myKbd and the myKbd Registration Data are copyright (c) 1995-2005 Alexander R. Pruss. The word "myKbd" below includes the myKbd software proper, the myKbd Registration Data, the myKbd Upgrade Data and this documentation file. The Force16 and Graffiti State Indicator software are freeware under the BSD license in advanced/Force16.html. Its license does not apply to myKbd, or myKbd Upgrade/Registration Data. The zipDB and syszlib code uses the zlib library (copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler). Syszlib was ported to PalmOS by Tom Zerucha and the ARM-acceleration is due to Justin Clark. The gorgeous Velo - Grayhide skin is copyright by Oscar Ljundberg and included by his kind permission. The Astronaut skin and all skins with "NASA" in the name are based on NASA photographs, but no endorsement by or affiliation with NASA is implied. The original black and white version of the home icon was drawn by Jeff Frankus, to whom I am grateful for permission to use. The configure icon is licensed under the BSD license, below. The Horizons skin is copyright (c) 2006 "filber" and is included with his kind permission under the by-nc-sa 2.5 (included) Creative Commons license with the additional provision: "It is additionally permitted to include this skin with any legally licensed distribution of mySkin as well as to make unrestricted modifications and copies of it for one's personal use, as long as one does not distribute these to others."
1. This is a legally binding agreement between you and Alexander Pruss. You agree to this agreement by USING myKbd, where "USING" is defined as copying myKbd or any portion of it into a PDA's storage (of any sort: permanent or not, hard disk or solid state), or executing myKbd or any portion of it, or making or distributing further copies of myKbd. If you disagree, you must destroy all your copies of myKbd, or portions thereof, including, if you have it, and the myKbd Registration/Upgrade Data or portions thereof.
2. myKbd is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, implied or express, without even any implied MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE warranty. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. It may crash and burn, destroying your data, but Alexander Pruss may not be held responsible for this. You agree that you know this and you agree that you know that a fully backup of all your PDA data should be made before using.
3. You can re-sell or give away your copy of the myKbd Registration Data or of the myKbd full version, but only if you delete all of your own copies of myKbd's Registration Data and require the recipient to adhere to this agreement, and only if have never violated this agreement. You may install myKbd and, if and only if you have a legally licensed copy, its Registration Data on one PDA. You may make as many backup copies of myKbd and its Registration Data for your own use as you wish, providing that (a) you ensure that nobody else has access to these copies or portions thereof (thus, you may not place these copies on a network in a way that allows others to access them), and (b) that only one PDA at any given time has myKbd, its Registration Data and/or a portion thereof ACCESSIBLE to it, where a copy of myKbd or its Registration Data is defined as "ACCESSIBLE TO A PDA" providing that it is loaded on any storage, internal, external or networked, that the PDA is hooked up to, in such a way that it is possible to transfer data from that storage device to the internal memory of the PDA. Sale or transfer under any other conditions is prohibited.
4. You are not permitted to use myKbd in an objectively immoral way or in a way that violates copyright or trademark law, whether international or specific to your location. In fact, you are not permitted to use myKbd in a way that violates any law operative at your location. The one exception is with respect to laws limiting freedom of expression within a totalitarian state. For the purposes of this agreement, anti-pornography, copyright and trademark laws do not count as "limiting freedom of expression" and the United States of America does not count as a "totalitarian state".
5. Any attempts to allow myKbd to load or merge skins (other than the built-in OS skin) without registration after the expiry of the trial period are violations of this agreement. Furthermore, this agreement prohibits you from attempting to find, discover or communicate any methods or tools for continuation of non-ROM skin loading/merging after the expiry of the trial period.
6. As a special permission that may be withdrawn at any time, and that is automatically withdrawn forever (unless explicit notification to the contrary is received from Alexander R. Pruss) whenever any of the terms of this agreement have been violated, you may distribute unmodified copies of the unregistered shareware version of myKbd to anyone you wish, providing that (a) all copies include in unmodified form myKbd-Installer.prc and this readme.html file, (b) this license is binding on all recipients, (c) any website on which the data is posted neither contains or links to any methods or tools for continuation of use of the skin loading features (other than restoration of ROM skin) after the expiry of the trial period. The special permission for distributing the unregistered shareware version may be withdrawn either by personal communication from Alexander Pruss (by voice, email or writing), or by a general notice posted at www.prussfamily.us/SkinT3Notices.html. You are responsible for reading any such notices before attempting to distribute.
7. The Registration Data for myKbd contains a complete computer program copyright (c) 1995 Alexander R. Pruss, distributed in source code format. Copying, distribution or re- distribution of this program is absolutely forbidden by this agreement except under the conditions of point 3 as limited by the rest of this agreement.
8. You are not permitted to use myKbd in an objectively immoral way or in a way that violates copyright or trademark law, whether international or specific to your location. In fact, you are not permitted to use myKbd in a way that violates ANY law operative at your location, with the one exception being laws unduly limiting freedom of expression within a totalitarian state. At least for the purposes of this agreement, anti-pornography, copyright and trademark laws do not count as "unduly limiting freedom of expression" and the United States of America does not count as a "totalitarian state".
You should make a backup before using this software.
myKbd comes with a free fifteen day trial during which time it is fully functional. After that, hex keyboard functionality, the ability to load or merge skins other than the OS skin, or to move skins to VFS, is disabled. The ability to control display depth, change clock and Graffiti button color, or control whether application buttons are shown in full color or two-color mode remains in the free version that you get after expiry of the trial period. Likewise, the skin crash protection features should continue to work.
You can register at zlthemes.com to restore all the functions of the full version. mySkin users can purchase myKbd for a discounted price.
myKbd is designed for the Palm T3, T5, TX and LifeDrive. On other devices, it functions as a free hard-key macro program, with all skin-related functions disabled.
The basic ATOMIK hexagonal key layout has been computer-optimized by
IBM researchers Shumin Zhai and Barton Smith for speed of typing with a stylus by
putting letters commonly used together, like 't' and 'h', or 'e' and space,
as well as for speed of learning by putting the letters in approximate
alphabetical order so that you know to look for letters early in the alphabet
in the upper left area and for letters late in the alphabet in lower right
area. The myKbd developer has extended the layout to include right on-screen all
standard punctuation codes, as well as a number of special keys (including two
small macro keys), and the ability to generate just about all
accented and other extended characters.
The hexagonal shape of the keys allows a lot of keys to fit on the screen while optimizing ease of tapping. A hexagonal key should easier to hit than a rectangular or square key of the same area (a lot of the tappable area of a rectangular key is wasted because of the sharp corners which are hard to tap inside).
The myKbd developer, Alexander Pruss, has no affiliation with IBM but is grateful to Shumin Zhai and Barton Smith for encouragement and a number of helpful discussions.
myKbd/ATOMIK is very easy to use. Just hotsync myKbd-Installer.prc, run "myKbd Installer" if it does not start automatically, then run myKbd, tap ATOMIK Keyboard, and tap on "Load". Then tap on letters to type. To go back to Graffiti, tap on the handwritten "g", and to go back to ATOMIK tap on the "abc" or "123" in the Graffiti area.
I recommend first practicing by tapping on the 
icon in the upper right hand corner of the myKbd area and typing some things in the Test Area.
You will notice that no shift key is needed for any punctuation, but some keys are split in half,
with each half functioning as a separate key.
There is a shift key for capitalization. Alternately, you can draw a capital letter by drawing a long enough (the default is 11 pixels) line or curve within the key you are typing, and you can turn on PalmOS's auto-shift which automatically capitalizes the first word of each sentence. Using the shift key is, in the author's experience, faster for capitalization than the line/curve method.
You can type neighboring letters by sweeping the stylus carefully through them, without lifting it. This even lets you enter some simple words like "the" with a single stroke, or even word and space combinations like " the ".
If you need special characters like ä or £ (pound), first enter a regular character that
resembles the one you want either by appearance or logically, in this case 'a' or '$', respectively,
and tap on the Cycle button 
repeatedly until it shows up.
There is a list of all the cycles later on in this manual.
To adjust the hex keyboard's cycling (and capitalization, too) to work better with your language, tap on the globe icon, select a language, and tap on set. For instance, in the German settings, umlauts will come up with the first press of the cycle button after a vowel, while in the French settings, the grave accent will come up first, then then acute, and then the circumflex.
The backspace, arrow and Cycle keys all will auto-repeat if you hold them down.
To learn ATOMIK faster, notice that the space key is the blank hexagon in the middle of the alphabetic area. It is surrounded by letters that make up a number of common words and letter combinations like 'the', 'top', 'is', 'in', 'ing', 'end'. Remembering the locations of these words will help you remember key locations. For the less commonly used letters, simply remember that they are in approximate alphabetical order and you will find them faster.
I highly recommend the free FitalyLetris program for speed training on ATOMIK or any other keyboard layout (it was designed for Fitaly) as well as the free T-Blaster game for practicing tapping on each letter (note that T-Blaster doesn't allow multi-character sweeps).
If you have the Palm Universal Wireless Keyboard, I highly recommend disabling its drivers or setting its Power Savings mode to "Detect Keyboard within 30 seconds" (then the driver disables in 30 seconds after the PDA is turned on if no keyboard is detected).
In the extra_keyboards directory you will find a darker version of ATOMIK as well as an alternate keyboard known as Metropolis, also developed at IBM, and optimized only for speed of tapping, not for speed of learning. Research suggests that beginners will type 10% faster with ATOMIK, but the projected top typing speed is slightly higher for Metropolis. To learn Metropolis, note that the vowels are located on a three-armed star surrounding the space.
For advanced users, there is a free Keyboard Layout Generator that lets you adjust the colors and layout of the keyboard. There are also macro facilities.
Finally, myKbd allows you to customize the appearance of your statusbar and the Graffiti writing area, e.g., by loading a Dynamic Input Area (DIA) skin or inserting a photo from your PDA's memory or SD card right into it (photo support on T5, TX and LifeDrive only). A number of skins are included in the graffiti_skins directory. You can even use myKbd to load skins for one of the supported devices (T3, T5, TX and LifeDrive) on any of the other supported devices. For instance, there are a lot of T3 skins, but fewer skins designed specifically for the T5, TX and LifeDrive, but myKbd can happily convert (but please read the skin loading instructions for how to do this without potentially causing a crash).
If you previously had mySkin (or SkinT3 or SkinDIA) installed, myKbd will overwrite your mySkin installation. myKbd includes all of the functions of mySkin. myKbd is available at a highly discounted price to mySkin users.
Important note: A DIA skin contains a description of all of the panels for the input area, including the Graffiti and Keyboard panels (and omitted items are filled in by myKbd from ROM). Thus, if you have loaded ATOMIK and then load another skin, it will overwrite ATOMIK's Keyboard panel. To fix this, if you wish to combine other skins with ATOMIK, first load ATOMIK and then use the Merge menu to choose which components from the skin you want to merge in. Alternately, you can load the other skin and then choose "Merge whole skin" from the Merge menu.
If you are using a Tungsten T5, TX or LifeDrive with skins designed for the T3, you should read the instructions carefully.
For a quick start, install myKbd-Installer.prc (via hotsync to RAM or Program Memory), and run it if it does not start automatically. This will put "myKbd" and some support files on your device. Then on a separate hotsync, install some skins (if the skins are not T3-specific skins, you can install them on the initial hotsync).
myKbd includes VFS support which lets you move your skins to SD or other media and has support for 16-bit skins. You can register the trial version on zlthemes.com.
Most of the following links are for Graffiti skins designed for the T3. But since myKbd lets you use T3 Graffiti skins on your T5, TX or LifeDrive, this shouldn't matter. But make sure you read the instructions carefully when cross-loading skins.
If you have a T5, TX or LifeDrive, you can use myKbd to create Graffiti skins by inserting photographs that you have on your PDA into the input / statusbar area. The photographs must be accessible to the Media application on your PDA, and can be in main memory, in the "Photos & Videos" folder on the Internal Drive (T5 and LifeDrive) or in the DCIM folder on an SD card. You can copy photos to your PDA by using the Media option in Palm Desktop, or, on the T5 and LifeDrive, by using other Palm-supplied software. See the instructions that came with your PDA.
Once you have copied the photographs to your PDA, simply tap on the "photo" icon in the upper-right corner of the myKbd screen (or choose the "Put photo into skin..." option in the "Files" menu). Then tap on "Get photo". You may rotate the photo. To select the region you want to be used for the input area, select a region by tapping within the selection rectangle and dragging to move it, and by dragging corners to resize the rectangle. Once you have selected the area, tap on "Go". You can also use the checkboxes to choose which parts of the skin the photo goes into. You can use the same or a different photo for the landscape-orientation skin as for the portrait-orientation skin, but you do need to separately insert the photo into both. To do this, after inserting the photo in one orientation, just rotate your display (or tap on the drop down box), select a region again, and tap "Insert photo" again.
You can also select the color for elements like the dotted lines in 3-cell mode and the captions for the different input cells.
There are also several free 16-bit skins included, especially the gorgeous Horizons skin by "filber", and a beautiful 8-bit Velo Grayhide skin included by courtesy of its author, Oscar Ljundberg.
If you are upgrading from a previous version, hotsync myKbd-Installer.prc to your PDA. To re-enable some features and bug fixes, simply run myKbd after installing. Some new features and performance improvements may require re-loading a skin.
Note that if you are upgrading from mySkin 2.05-2.07 or myKbd 1.00-1.01, you will need to uninstall the previous version before installing a new one. Do this with the "Uninstall" option in the "File" menu.
If you have IconFix enabled for all applications, you will save some memory by disabling IconFix for all applications, deleting IconFix and then using the "Full-color icon mode" option in the "Color" menu of myKbd. This will require a soft reset.
To uninstall myKbd, you should choose the "Uninstall" command in the "File" menu. You may wish to delete the skins first, as the "Uninstall" leaves them alone, or you can afterwards manually delete all the skins using a file manager or the Launcher's "Delete" menu option.
Note that if you ever wish to delete myKbd directly in Filez or another file manager, its name is shown as "SkinDIA!" for historical reasons.
Read all of these instructions very carefully, especially if using T3 skins on a T5, TX or LifeDrive unit.
Hotsync myKbd-Installer.prc to your PDA to install the trial version. If you have registered myKbd, hotsync myKbd_Registration.pdb to your PDA. You should then be able to simply hotsync skins, either to RAM or to a card's /PALM/Programs/myKbd directory, and then run myKbd. If you are running on a T3 or LifeDrive, make sure you have hotsync'ed and run myKbd-Installer.prc before hotsync'ing any skins. You also should not run myKbd from an SD card (though myKbd-Installer.prc can be run from a card to install myKbd), though storing skins on an SD card is highly recommended.
If you're a registered mySkin and using, or thinking about using, the discounted version of myKbd for mySkin users, you need to ensure you install myKbd over your registered mySkin. myKbd will then function in 15-day trial mode. You can go back to your registered mySkin by just hotsync'ing a trial version of mySkin. Or you can register myKbd by buying the discounted version and hotsync'ing myKbd_Upgrade.pdb.
You may occasionally find that the wrong key gets pressed if you have T5, TX or LifeDrive. This is due to a hardware and/or operating system problem on these devices that causes taps to be occasionally recognized as short lines (start the built-in Notepad application, minimize the input area, and tap rapidly in the Notepad area in one place, and if your device has the problem, some of your taps will turn into short lines). myKbd tries its best to compensate for this problem and succeeds most of the time, but sometimes the problem is so bad that even this is not enough. Turning off "Extra sensitivity" in the hex keyboard configuration dialog may help. Replacing your device is not very likely to help--the problem seems to happen in the majority of units. Asking Palm to release a patch to overcome this problem is highly recommended. For more information on this problem, see this thread.
T3 DIA skins come in three varieties: standard T3 DIA skins, F3T3AgendaBG skins and myKbd (also known as SkinT3! skins or 16-bit skins) universal skins. All three kinds can be loaded by myKbd. F3T3AgendaBG and myKbd skins work by far the most easily, and should work on the T3/T5/TX/LifeDrive with no problems. (Note that myKbd skins might not be "complete", i.e., may deliberately lack a number of resources. Missing resources will be filled in from the ROM skin by myKbd when activating the skin.)
The installation of standard T3 DIA skins differs between a T3, on the one hand, and the T5/TX/LifeDrive. This should be no surprise since standard T3 DIA skins are designed specifically for a T5/TX/LifeDrive. If you're not sure if something is a standard skin or not, assume it's a standard skin.
Standard T3 DIA skins activate on a T3 automatically after being hotsync'ed to RAM, overwriting any previous standard T3 DIA skin. Typically they also force a soft reset on hotsync'ing. They also do not have any distinctive name in the database beyond the standard name "StatusBarResources". If myKbd finds that a standard T3 DIA skin got loaded into RAM since the last myKbd session, it will convert that skin to a myKbd skin, renaming it to a skin named "Unnamed DIA skin #X", and deactivate it. It will also attempt to activate the previously loaded skin. This means that you can install standard T3 DIA skins just by hotsync'ing them, running myKbd, and then renaming the "Unnamed DIA skin #X" skin to some more usable name.
However, all this is a bit of a nuisance given the reset that these skins cause. You have two other choices. The first is to load the skin onto an SD card instead of RAM, in the /PALM/Programs/myKbd or /PALM/Launcher directory. The second choice is to "fix up" the skin before hotsync'ing it, and convert it to myKbd skin format. This can be done by double clicking on FixUpSkin.exe on a Windows unit, and then selecting the skin to be converted to myKbd format. Such skins no longer self-activate. In fact, you should not attempt to activate them in any way other than by using myKbd. (Advanced users may be used to activating skins by renaming them and changing the creator ID. Do not do this with myKbd skins, as this may cause a crash.)
If you hotsync a standard T3 DIA skin to the program memory of a T5/TX/LifeDrive, you may have problems, including a crash and losing the Graffiti area completely (in which case you should do a warm reset and after it run myKbd to recover). Therefore, hotsync'ing a standard T3 DIA skin to program memory on a T5/TX/LifeDrive is definitely not recommended.
Therefore, you should do one of three things.
Option 1: Instead of loading the skin to program memory, you could load it to the internal drive (or an SD card) in the /PALM/Programs/myKbd or /PALM/Launcher directory.
Option 2: "Fix up" the skin before hotsync'ing it, and convert it to myKbd skin format. This can be done by double clicking on FixUpSkin.exe on a Windows unit, and then selecting the skin to be converted to myKbd format. Such skins no longer self-activate and you should not attempt to activate them in any way other than by using myKbd.
Option 3: The current version myKbd has "Cross-Load Protection". Make sure that either you have at some point run myKbd or you have installed it via hotsync (rather than copying from PC to card and from card to RAM). Then you can hotsync new skins without using FixUpSkin. Note that you must use hotsync if you do not use FixUpSkin--copying skins to a card and then copying them from card to RAM via a utility like Filez will not activate Cross-Load Protection for the skin. This installation method will result in going back to the standard OS skin--you will need to go to myKbd to load the newly hotsync'ed skin or some other skin.
myKbd needs enough memory to make an extra copy in RAM of the skin being loaded. If it lacks this memory, it may crash. (For partial skins being loaded, enough memory for the full skin, after adding components from the base skin, is needed.)
To deactivate myKbd, simply load in the "Built-in OS skin".
The "to SD" (or "to Drv") button lets you move a skin to an SD card or Internal Drive (use the
configuration form
--tap on the wrench (
)--
to control the destination).
To copy a skin instead of moving it, use the "File" menu.
Tapping the menu button, brings up a menu. In the "File" menu there is a useful function to move all skins from RAM to an SD card or internal drive (VFS is the general name used), to copy (not move) one skin to VFS and to copy or move the skin from the card to RAM. There is an options menu with many useful preferences. There is a "Merge" menu for combining resources from different skins--see further on down.
Using the "Color" menu also lets you modify the currently loaded skin by changing the clock color and the color of the two-color buttons in the Graffiti area. Newly loaded skins can override these settings. You can also control whether application icons are shown in two-color mode, which is the system default, or in full-color mode. This used to require IconFix which created overlays that took up some memory and didn't work for all icons. Now it works for all icons without any such overlays. (You can disable IconFix support for all icons and still use this option. Or you can keep myKbd set in "two-color" mode and use IconFix to control which icons are specifically shown in full color.)
You can control the text and interstices color in Palm-style (rectangular key) keyboards. To control the style of hex keyboards, use the free Keyboard Layout Generator software.
Whenever a setting in the "Color" menu is changed, or a skin is loaded that affects the setting, a reset may be needed for the setting to take effect. You can, of course, choose "Later" to the question whether to do a reset, and make other changes first. Or if you're loading a skin that changed a color and you don't care about seeing this change, you don't have to bother with the reset. You can choose the option never to even ask about a reset. (But still the "Reset" button will magically appear on the screen whenever you do something that makes a reset appropriate.)
MessageEaseStamp (MEST) and Fitaly come with its own custom skins of which only a few components are modified from the OS skins. You can mix-and-match the components of these skins with components of other skins. For your convenience, the MERGE menu includes a "MEST components" and a "Fitaly components" option which simply merges in the MEST-specific components from a MEST-specific skin (presumably F3T3AgSkinMEST3-007ANI or F3T3AgSkinMEST3-ANI007) or the Fitaly-specific components from a Fitaly-specific skin (presumably T3FitalySkin2, which if you keep it in RAM will have been renamed to "Unnamed DIA skin #x"). Thus, you can LOAD any custom skin not designed for MEST or Fitaly, and then MERGE the MEST- or Fitaly-specific components on top of it from the MEST or Fitaly skin.
Because MEST and Fitaly work in the Graffiti tri-cell panel while ATOMIK works in the keyboard panel, you might actually be able to use MEST/Fitaly and ATOMIK together, though there may be some incompatibilities.
myKbd can read skins from an SD card (and other VFS devices) and move them to VFS. Tap on the SD button (if you happen to have another VFS device, you can selected in the preference dialog). Skins are read from the PALM\Launcher, PALM\Programs\SkinT3 and PALM\Programs\AgendaBG directories on all available VFS devices. You can make myKbd start up faster if you keep all your skins in PALM\Programs\SkinT3 and/or PALM\Programs\AgendaBG and in the Preferences dialog disable the option to search PALM\Launcher.
It is not recommended that you load myKbd itself onto an SD card or other VFS device.
FontSmoother is a utility by the same developer, available on zlthemes.com, that lets you use smooth (antialiased) fonts in a variety of sizes and styles (in fact, any Windows TrueType font can be converted). If you care about how your PDA looks, FontSmoother will likely make an enormous difference, besides letting you fit more information on screen with smaller fonts or improve legibility with clearer fonts of the same or larger size.
However, a very small handful of DIA skins seem to have an incompatibility with FontSmoother which causes the statusbar clock to be mixed up. To solve this, use the custom merge function in the Merge menu to merge in the clock backgrounds from another skin (e.g., the built-in OS skin, or one of the included skins).
(Note to skin developers: Please avoid skins where the clock background is a fully transparent rectangle.)
Tap on the icon to bring up the hex keyboard
configuration menu.
The options available are:
There is a sophisticated set of programmable macros available in myKbd.
These are invoked by using one of the two dedicated macro keys labeled
with a circled "1" or "2" (lower-left and lower-right of myKbd's ATOMIK
layout) or by using a letter/punctuation/number plus "Cycle" ()
combination. (If you assign a macro to a key plus "Cycle", then to access
the special characters for that key normally access by cycling, you will need
to press shift-"Cycle".)
You can also
You can also
assign macros to the four application keys on the front of your PDA (the "hard keys" as
they are known). In fact, you can assign a different macro to a short and a different
macro to a long press. One nice application of this is that by assigning the "<recent&rt;"
macro to a long press of the first button on the TX, you replace the system's recent applications
list with myKbd's better list (better because you can add favorite applications to it for
permanent listing with the Options | Favorites option).
You can use the macros to generate boilerplate text or templates. Or you can use them to launch applications and Desk Accessories, run control panel entries, tap on menu entries, etc.
To enter a macro, go to the Keyboard configuration form
()
and tap on the "Macros" button. Now tap on the
"Macro character"
field.
To assign the key to one of the two macro keys, just press that
macro key. To assign a key to a key plus "Cycle" (), just tap on the key itself, not on the "Cycle"
button. Thus, if you put "a" in the "Macro character" field, you then invoke by pressing "a" followed by
"Cycle".
To assign a macro to one of the four hard keys on the front of the PDA, tap on the field, and then press the hard key. You can select
whether the macro is assigned to a normal short press, or to a one-second hold. On the T5, TX and LifeDrive you can also assign
a macro to a one-second hold of the center key. To do that, just tap on the field and press the center key.
Then tap on "Macro text" field and enter the text you would like to insert whenever you
activate the macro.
You can include special commands like <hotsync> or <launcher> by choosing them from a drop-down list.
Possibly useful commands include the <tap> and <menu> commands which let you tap on a particular button (only buttons with standard text labels work) or on a particular menu entry. If you choose these commands from the drop-down list, you will be asked for the text to select. (With the <menu> command, if you leave this blank, you will simply pop up the menu.) When the macro is activated, myKbd will look for that entry. It first looks for the entry exactly as you entered (but in a case-insensitive way, so "about" matches both "about" and "About") and if it doesn't find it, then it looks for an entry that begins with the text you entered (thus entering "<menu about>" will result in a selection of "About myKbd" when activated within myKbd).
It is recommended that special commands be entered through the drop-down list to minimize the danger of typos or syntax errors.
The <wait nnn> command waits for nnn milliseconds (i.e., for nnn/1000 seconds). This is useful after <run> because it can be used to give the application some time to start up. The <waittitle ttt> command waits for a window whose title starts with ttt (case insensitive).
Macros may not be compatible with all applications. To interrupt a macro that is playing, tap on the screen, but not on exactly the same pixel where you tapped to start playback if you did so via a tap.
Macros assigned to the four application keys ("hard keys") may interfere with special functions in some applications that use these keys for their own purposes. This is particularly likely in a game. You can tap on "Options" in the Macros dialog to choose for which applications hard key macros are active.
Limitation: Macro playback currently stops when myKbd is launched, including when it is launched from the skin-switching macro commands.
The built-in Palm touchscreen calibration only calibrates over the top square area of the screen. This means that the calibration is optimal for tapping within that area, but not for tapping on keyboards (e.g., ATOMIK or MEST or the Palm QWERTY keyboard) in the input area. Choosing Menu | Options | Calibrate lets you calibrate the touchscreen over the whole of the screen.
Once you get the calibrate screen, just tap on the red dots in the middle of the calibration X's. You must tap on at least two of the X's. If you find you tapped too far away from where you meant to, you can restart the calibration process. Once you tap on two X's, you get an "OK" button to finish calibration. Try not to reset the PDA in the middle of calibration or you will start up in an uncalibrated state.
You can keep on tapping on X's for as long as you like, and myKbd will average the tap values for greater precision. I recommend a minimum of four taps.
The Palm TX does not include the useful home button in the status bar that the T3, T5 and LifeDrive
did. myKbd brings it back in the place of the search button. Just go to myKbd's configuration form
()
and turn it on. You can hold the stylus on it for about a second to pop up a list of the last
couple of applications run. (Note that those applications available via hard keys are omitted.)
You can choose whether you want the search function to work by holding down the statusbar menu
button. If not, you will get a search option in the popup list of last applications instead.
You can even set some applications and Desk Accessories to show up permanently on the popup list. To do this, go to Menu | Options | Favorites, and add these applications to your Favorites list.
This option allows you to hide/show the statusbar by tapping on its outer edge (the bottom edge in portrait, the right edge in right-handed landscape, the left edge in left-handed landscape), just against the screen frame plastic. Some applications may not be compatible with this.
With the Palm TX, Palm has removed the venerable Graffiti State Indicator which shows auto-shift and other states. This is unfortunate as myKbd uses this for capslock and shift state, and it makes auto-shift much easier to use. You can bring it back by installing the Graffiti State Indicator hack. See the instructions here.
If you just want to change the color of some skin elements, use the "Advanced colorize skin" command in the "Color" menu. Check the skin elements you wish to colorize. Tap on the color box for the destination color to set that.
There is a drop-down list setting the colorization mode. There are three options:
You can also select whether you are creating a 16-bit or an 8-bit skin. 16-bit skins will have more precise color gradients, while 8-bit skins take up less memory.
zlib-based skin compression is supported by the current version of myKbd. To compress a skin on your PC, run the enclosed zipDB.exe (in the advanced/ directory) program and select the skin. (You can also run it non-interactively from a commandline via zipDB -n filename.prc.) This will save ten to eighty percent space, at the cost of slightly slower skin loading. When you first run myKbd it will automatically install syszlib.prc (the ARM version, to be precise). If you distribute compressed skins, make sure you tell users to upgrade to version 1.45 of mySkin or version 1.00 of myKbd before installing the compressed skins.
A handy tip for compressing skins right on your PDA is to move them to an SD card or Internal Drive, run "Drive Mode" or "Card Export", and then compress them with zipDB on your PC.
It should be theoretically possible to store myKbd and the skins not just in VFS but in flash ROM via some utility like Jackflash. I have not tested this configuration. One important caution. Before you do that, make sure the skins are "deactivated" by either running them through FixUpSkin or by installing them and running myKbd. You should not put the myKbd StatusBarResources database into ROM.
You might like one set of components of one skin and another set of components of another. For instance, you might like the status bar from one skin but want to stick with your OS's built-in Graffiti backgrounds. You can do that with myKbd by using the "merge" options. First, use the "Load" button (or just press the five-way navigator) to load the skin you want for most of the components. Then highlight another skin by tapping on its name, and pull down the menu (tap on the "myKbd" title bar), go to the "Merge" menu, and choose which components you want to merge in. If you want more precise control, choose the custom merge option.
The "Merge all" option is useful for "partial" skins. These are skins that do not include all components. For instance, some "partial" skins may include only buttons or only Graffiti backgrounds. Normally when a "partial" skin is loaded, the missing components are supplied from the built-in OS skin. But if you load the skin via the "Merge all" option (or in fact via any merge option), the previously active skin's resources are used for the resources missing in the skin loaded.
For instance, the included GeekySkin only has Graffiti area backgrounds. Suppose you want to use these backgrounds together with the buttons, keyboards and statusbar from MyFavoriteSkin. Normally loading GeekySkin will get you buttons, keyboards and statusbar from the OS. However, you can instead load MyFavoriteSkin and then use "Merge all" to merge in the GeekySkin's Graffiti area backgrounds, creating a hybrid in memory.
It is possible that creating such a hybrid might violate copyright laws. Consult your local law and any license agreements with your skins and software.
) key repeatedly.
Here is a list of the cycles (which you can change with the Keyboard Layout Generator):
| aäàáâãåæª | eëèéê | oöòóôõøœ°º | AÄÀÁÂÃÅÆ |
| EËÈÉÊ | OÖÒÓÔÕØŒ | sßš§ | SŠ§ |
| cç©Ž | CÇ© | iìíîï | IÌÍÎÏ |
| dð | DÐ | P¶ | p¶ |
| tþ™ | TÞ™ | uüùúû | UÜÙÚÛ |
| nñ | NÑ | yýÿ | YÝŸ |
| ïìíî | ÏÌÍÎ | ?¿ | SŠ |
| sš | fƒ | $£€¥¢¤ | !¡ |
| "“”„ | *†‡× | .•· | -–—¬± |
| %‰ | <‹« | >›» | 4¼¾ |
| 2½² | 3³ | 0°º | 1¹ |
| mµ | +±†‡ | .… | x× |
| X× | /÷ | r® | R® |
| '‘’‚ | |¦ |
If you make your own skins from scratch or by mixing and merging components, you might wish to show off your creations. There is an option in the File menu to save a screen image, in .bmp format, of the Graffiti/statusbar area in the root directory of your card or Internal Drive (use the Preferences to set the precise destination). If you want to show off different panels and orientations, you can save multiple images, e.g., make one in portrait and one in landscape mode. The .bmp file has a filename based on the name of the last skin you loaded/merged.
If you are a skin designer or you want to be able to browse a large skin collection on your desktop, there is an option to dump images of all loaded skins. This works very slowly.
Note that each image takes about 150k of space.
Currently, all methods of loading DIA skins other than myKbd apparently cause a crash when you load a skin and then pull up the clock popup (by tapping on the statusbar clock) eight times. Obviously, you don't do this eight times in a row, but the count appears to be cumulative (unless you do a reset in the meanwhile), so this means that if you load a skin without using myKbd, you might get a crash. The crash is due to a bug or poor programming practice in the ROM code handling the RAM (or "Device" on T5) icons in the clock popup. It is not currently known if this is an issue on the TX.
myKbd protects against this crash in two ways, depending on whether the "support RAM icons in clock popup" option is activated in the myKbd preferences:
Note for skin designers: If you want to create skins that do not cause this crash and that can be loaded by users who do not have myKbd, you should simply omit abmp resources 19520-19528 from your skin. This implements the first of the two solutions above at the level of your skin. ( Note that if the user loads in the skin with myKbd and RAM icon support activated, the default icon from the OS will be used, so the skin will look better.)
The T3 can display in 1-bit (monochrome), 2- and 4-bit (grayscale), 8-bit and 16-bit color. Since skins look different in the different settings, myKbd lets you change the current depth setting to look at a skin at a different setting by going to the Options menu.
Using the Options | Preferences dialog
(or the button)
form, you can also make the current depth
setting the default for applications.
Some applications override the default, but many do not. Higher bit settings
will make applications use more memory, but perhaps will improve quality.
And 16-bit display mode is needed to make full use of 16-bit skins.
The default depth setting is set back to 8 after a soft reset. There is
an option in the Options | Preferences dialog to force
the current setting to stick after a soft reset.
There are some third-party utilities that also set screen depth. Some of these may interefere with myKbd's attempt to set the default system depth. (Butterfly is reported to do so in the case of ClieSkinner on the TH-55.) If you are running such a utility, use it rather than myKbd for setting system depth or deinstall it.
To improve quality, you can use 16-bit skins. These display correctly in both 8- and 16-bit screen modes, though look best in 16-bit modes. For instance, GeekySkin is a 16-bit skin.
Not all applications support 16-bit display. Those that do not will display the skin in downgraded 8-bit mode, though should still work. In the Preferences, there is a "dithering" option in the preferences to control how the skin gets downgraded. The "auto" option leaves it up to the skin designer. (Currently, all skins are released with dithering enabled.) When dithering is on, 16-bit images displayed in 8- bit mode are more fuzzy but have better color fidelity, while without dithering the images are sharper but the color fidelity suffers. Which is the better choice depends on the skin. You will need to reload the current skin for this option to take effect as it only affects skins at loading time. Note that turning off dithering increases the memory usage.
For those applications that do not support 16-bit display, I include a copy of Force16 in the advanced/ directory. Make sure you read its documentation carefully before installing.
Warning: Support for 16-bit skins may result in problems with some backup software because the myKbd internal databases have an oversized (>65000 bytes) resource. For instance, Backupman may skip the myKbd internal databases when restoring, but seem to work fine otherwise. In general, backup software may ask whether to skip the StatusBarResources database when restoring due to out of memory or other errors--this is because of the oversized resource. Just say "yes" to any skip or delete prompts for this database. myKbd will regenerate it next time you load a skin.
Making 16-bit skins requires generating the appropriate 16-bit resources. The only catch is that if you do that, some abmp resources might end up exceeding the 65000 byte limit, and then you will be unable to copy or load the skin. myKbd allows a workaround for this limit. An abmp resource may be split into two resources, an abmp resource that is exactly 65000 bytes long and a continuation resource of type 2bmp and the same id. When loading, myKbd will simply merge the two binary resources together into a single image.
There are options in the "File" menu to convert skins to myKbd format as well as to compact them. These operations only work on skins in RAM. To perform them on skins on a flash card, move them to RAM, perform the operation, and move them back to the card.
Compacting removes from a skin all resources that duplicate resources found in ROM and compresses the remaining resources. This saves memory. Compacting also changes the "Merge" behavior of the skin. Merging loads in all the resources from the skin, including any resources that duplicate those in ROM. After compacting, most of the latter will not be loaded by a "Merge" function (except for resources that are closely logically tied in such a way that they should not be separated, such as various keyboard resources), which actually should be nicer behavior. Compacting also automatically converts the skin to myKbd format. I recommend doing this, if only to save memory.
Conversion is useful because skins in F3T3AgendaBG format cause trouble for some backup programs. Note that when one converts an "F3T3AgendaBG" skin the "F3T3AGSkin" prefix is removed from the name, unless doing so is impossible due to another skin that the name would conflict with.
You can also save the currently displayed skin ("Save As..."), if copyright law allows this. This will create an extra copy of the skin. You can choose to compact the skin while doing this. Saving the skin also saves the button and clock colors (though not the full vs. two-color setting, which is not stored in a skin). Saving is useful when you have customized the skin via merge and color operations.
Compacting is quite useful in conjunction with special skins that change only a few components.
The myKbd skin format uses the Creator ID 'T3sk' and type 'rsrc'. Moreover, no 'ovly' resource is permitted: instead, the data that normally goes in the 'ovly' resource should be placed in the 'OVLY' resource. It is a good idea to omit resources that are just direct copies of what is in the ROM.
Information for users: Some skins come with a WiFiSlip.prc file that lets you skin the WiFi icon in the status bar. I do not recommend installing this file. If it's designed for a different model PDA than yours, it could cause a crash. A better solution is to use the FixUpSkin.exe program and give it the WiFiSlip.prc file as input. This file will then become a myKbd skin named "Converted WiFi skin [xxxx]". You can use myKbd, then, to merge this skin on top of the non-WiFi portions of your skin.
Information for skin developers: To skin the WiFi icons in the status bar, simply include the requisite 'abmp' 25100-25262 resources (look at WiFiSlip.prc on your device) inside the skin database. myKbd takes care of the rest.
If you load in a really buggy skin on any model or hotsync a standard T3 skin on a T5/TX/LifeDrive, you could have continual crashes on reset. To fix this, you can try to do a warm reset (navigator-up plus reset) and then load the Built-In OS Skin in myKbd. The input area may not be working at this point. To get to the Launcher, you may need to hold down the navigator button on the T3, or else press the Launcher button on the T5/TX/LifeDrive. If myKbd is crashing or cannot run after a warm reset, get a file manager like Filez. Switch the input area to Graffiti. Delete the "StatusBarResources" file in RAM (not in ROM!) to uninstall the currently loaded skin.
Note that if you ever wish to delete myKbd directly in Filez or another file manager, its name is shown as "SkinDIA!" for historical reasons.
The author can be contacted by email at arpruss@gmail.com.
There is a Yahoo discussion/support forum.
Partial source code is available on handypalmstuff.sf.net.
There is one API officially exposed by myKbd/mySkin. Sublaunch with globals enabled
and launch code sysAppLaunchCmdCustomBase. If the cmdPBP argument is NULL or an
empty string, this loads the previous skin. If it is a non-empty string, myKbd/mySkin
loads the first skin in its list order it can find with the database name specified
in the string. The skin may be on an SD card in any of the directories myKbd/mySkin
searches. To load the default system skin, use "StatusBarResources".
id = DmFindDatabase( 0, "SkinDIA!" ); // myKbd/mySkin has this dbname
if ( id == NULL ) {
// no SkinDIA!
}
SysAppLaunch( card, id, sysAppLaunchFlagNewGlobals,
sysAppLaunchCmdCustomBase, // this is crucial!
skinDBName,
&result );
Copyright (c) 2002, Vadim Plessky
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
1.56: Improved integration with OS's auto shift.
1.55: Internationalization adjustment.
1.51: Support for using hold of center button for a macro trigger (not in T3). Fix recent app list bug.
1.50: Sort all recent app list items by date of last use. Works for free in macro-only mode on devices without virtual input area.
1.43: Better recent app popup navigation. Recent app popup now shows up in PalmPDF when you tap on bottom edge. Security update.
1.42: Add support for ShowBattery icons.
1.41: Hard button cooption fix.
1.40: Option to slide through space. Skin switching from macros. Option to disable hard key macros for selected applications. Fixed a popup list bug. Updated Horizons skin (thanks filber!).
1.33: Fix calibration and possibly Favorites bugs.
1.31: Fix advanced colorize and uninstall crashes.
1.30: Can compress skins in myKbd (use 'Compact and compress' menu option). Added HD to list of drive types. Fixed <keycode nn> macro. Recent-and-favorites list can be navigated with 5-way controller. Can separately merge clock backgrounds.
1.29: Can set to independently manage caps lock (turn off 'OS capslock' in keyboard options). Includes a bold sans-serif ATOMIK keyboard.
1.28: Fixed some potential crashes.
1.27: Added waittitle macro command. Fixed location of TX popup.
1.26: Can assign macros to the four hard keys. Fix T3 crash in Favorites.
1.25: Tap on edge to toggle statusbar option (tap on the wrench to enable). Favorite applications can persist in TX home button popup (menu | options | favorites).
1.20: Full-screen digitizer calibration. Macro 'Run' command can run preference panels. When myKbd trial expired for a registered mySkin user, mySkin functions continue to work.
1.19: Various tweaks.
1.18: Fixed landscape arrow layout in keyboard. Added Euro version of ATOMIK. Changed layout of +*-/ to move - and / closer to alphabetic keys as they can be used in text. (Reload skin to update.)
1.17: Added 'Stroke margin' option to control multi-key stroke sensitivity.
1.16: Fix double-tap in some apps. Fix shift key in no-auto-shift mode.
1.15: Added installer. Improved installation process to fix the Disappearing Application Bug. T3 transparency fix.
1.10: Added Horizons skin. Fixed TX home and menu button sizes. Fixed some T3 statusbar color issues.
1.02: Easier upgrading.
1.01: Fix capitalization bug in cases where "multiple keys" is disabled.
1.00: Official release.