HIM (re)opened
I have been working for the past months in Hildon Input Methods (HIM) and many things have changed in it (and many will) with only a target in mind: make the experience of typing in N900, physically or virtually, a great experience.
Still, one thing I dislike in HIM is the fact that it is semi-closed source. Now what’s this semi-closed source thingy? It means that some modules are open, others are closed (HIM is a complex project).
For the open ones, and have you failed noticing it, the sad truth was that they were updated from time to time. No open development was done… but this has changed!
Since last week, HIM’s open source modules are now developed “in the open”, using Gitorious (thanks to Kimmo)!
The modules are hildon-input-method and hildon-input-method-framework.
This constitutes another step of freedom inside Fremantle and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

January 28th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Good to hear.
Many people doesn’t know what Input Methods are, but when that one button is behaving unexpectedly, they go bonkers.
January 29th, 2010 at 5:23 am
Just out of curiosity, could this impact those of us trying to get bluetooth keyboards working under Maemo 5? It seems they were partially working pre PR1.1, but the update killed off what little connection there was, as most people can’t re-connect post update.
January 29th, 2010 at 9:51 am
We have done no special changes related to the support of bt keyboards, normally we focus on improving the official HIM modules such as the finger and hardware keyboards.
January 29th, 2010 at 10:32 am
Can you give us some hint on what to expect?
January 29th, 2010 at 11:04 am
I wish I could
January 30th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Does this mean that Swype will be a possibiity?
January 31st, 2010 at 10:13 pm
BT Keyboard support is a must. The N900 has a keyboard yes! But it is no good if you want to actually do a lot of typing with it. I am amazed that BT keyboard support isn’t currently workable.
I want to use my N900 for lost of things and if I could actually hook my BT keyboard up and do some serious work with it then it would go everywhere with me instead of a laptop.
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Swype is a possibility if they write a HIM plugin.