LineageOS, Current status : 16.0 Test Builds

[david 914]

1 hour ago, Craig said:

I assume the same is the case with stock, I assume its a switfkey thing, unrelated to the driver.  

I just know if I try to play something like supertux with swiftkey enabled, I can't control myself correctly, have to switch back to aosp keyboard (or gboard).  I assume its something related to the way swiftkey is trying to provide suggestions or something (although the suggestions bar doesn't pop up during games)... 

I tried a simple test of holding down a single key and was able to type other keys.  I tried with 2 keys held down and was able to type some keys, but not all.  I thought I remembered @netman explaining that there were some limitations like that in the fix, where it wouldn't allow for certain multi-key combos, but would allow for enough that game input could be mapped around it.  That is just from memory, though, so could be wrong.

Does it behave the way I described in LOS?

[netman 1,424]

1 minute ago, david said:

I tried a simple test of holding down a single key and was able to type other keys.  I tried with 2 keys held down and was able to type some keys, but not all.  I thought I remembered @netman explaining that there were some limitations like that in the fix, where it wouldn't allow for certain multi-key combos, but would allow for enough that game input could be mapped around it.  That is just from memory, though, so could be wrong.

Does it behave the way I described in LOS?

@tdm has implemented the driver sligthly differently for lineage, but his should work similarly. The limit of which combinations of 3 keys and up is limited by hardware and they should be the same ones and somewhat clustered together as to which ones will exclude eachother which makes it pretty much a non-issue to map for games. Any combination of 2 keys should be possible.

[Craig 1,435]

48 minutes ago, david said:

I tried a simple test of holding down a single key and was able to type other keys.  I tried with 2 keys held down and was able to type some keys, but not all.  I thought I remembered @netman explaining that there were some limitations like that in the fix, where it wouldn't allow for certain multi-key combos, but would allow for enough that game input could be mapped around it.  That is just from memory, though, so could be wrong.

Does it behave the way I described in LOS?

David, the multikey keyboard fix for stock and lineage both work fine.    Swiftkey is an unrelated issue.  If you don't understand what I mean, try playing supertux with swiftkey.  You can move around in the menus, set your options and keyboard layout, etc, but as soon as you start the game, you cant actually play.   With aosp keyboard (lineage) or gboard (stock) this is not a problem.

[david 914]

3 hours ago, Craig said:

David, the multikey keyboard fix for stock and lineage both work fine.    Swiftkey is an unrelated issue.  If you don't understand what I mean, try playing supertux with swiftkey.  You can move around in the menus, set your options and keyboard layout, etc, but as soon as you start the game, you cant actually play.   With aosp keyboard (lineage) or gboard (stock) this is not a problem.

I'm just saying that I have the keyboard fix (in stock) and I use SwiftKey, and I can use multiple keys at the same time (with the mentioned exceptions).  If it isn't happening for you in other apps, maybe it is something in the game itself that is conflicting.

I'll try supertux and report back how it acts in stock (with SwiftKey).

[spam71 55]

Thanks @Craig!

I couldn't play any games on nds and psx emulators, I thought it's caused by issues with Pro1 keyboard driver, but it was SwiftKey's fault. After I switched to LOS keyboard, everything's good.

[Derecho 7]

On 3/21/2020 at 1:40 PM, auvo.salmi said:

It is intended to work that way. To be close to the same as in pc keyboard. So you should mostly forget the yellow markings on the keyboard and use shift+number shortcuts as they are on your pc. I'm too lazy to search the post for you, but if you search these pages for at least five pages back, you should find some discussion and explanation for this.

Ugh, I had typed a fairly length message and then accidentally closed my tab :(. Here goes another attempt.

I've been using test build 2 from this topic as a daily driver, ever since my phone was delivered to me. I've come to understand that from build 3 and onwards, a factory reset is needed and the phone needs to be reconfigured again. That's absolutely fine and to be expected at such an early stage in development, but I held out for a bit as I didn't have the time on my hands to do that to my daily driver back when the next few builds were coming out. Then after that, I saw the keyboard driver got tackled and huge changes were being made. There was quite a lengthy discussion and it appears that keyboard behaviour changed between builds, and I wasn't sure what it'd end up like. So again, I held back. I am using a layout I made for FinQwerty to be able to type Polish characters on my phone by using the Fnkey / slanted arrow keys along with a character. Shift+Fn is also used, as that's the uppercase version of a polish character. This mimics behaviour of PC keyboards, as there AltGr is used with characters to produce the same special characters. I've seen that since then the focus has shifted to other issues and improvements, some of which seem very interesting actually and I'm eager to try them out and just be in sync with the latest build again.

So the big question now is; has the keyboard driver and associated behaviour stabilised? What's its current status? Can I just use the same FinQwerty layout as before? I'm led to believe that I can't, due to the various changes. In fact, the message I quoted seems to insinuate that there's been a regression in functionality, in that the Fnkey now mimics the Shift key. Is this true? Is this on end-user level with the built-in layouts, and thus customisable with a different layout, or is this on driver level? I've read through all pages of this topic and I was trying to keep an accurate picture of the state it ended up at, but I got completely lost :). I'm fine with writing another keyboard layout similar to how I did for FinQwerty, if it's a one-off effort that I can keep using for the foreseeable while. But, is it still possible to have FnKey operate separately from the Shift keys, and is it possible to do so in an immediate, as in not dead/sticky, way? And what is the current procedure for making such a layout? I've seen bits about a special file with kernel keycodes being placed in a specific location somewhere, is that the recommended way? Will this persist across reboots? What about reflashes? Can I simply push this file via adb without any further modifications to the ROM? I really hope that it's at least possible to get my keyboard working again on the new build, as I have it working now, because I'd call it perfect as it currently is. Only too bad about the missing backlight and gyroscope-based orientation (rather than slider-based), but the typing capabilities do matter more to me.

Thanks for hearing me out and thank you in advance for explaining :).

[D1ggs 141]

Has anyone had a problem with Swift Type and the latest build where occasionally when you press two keys at once, the accented character window pops up?

I'm having trouble recreating it, but it seems that switching to another software keyboard system and back seems to fix it. 

Driving me nuts and it's tempting me to switch to another keyboard. 

edit: Here's how to recreate it. This happens regardless of keyboard in use. To recreate the bug, in any text entry field (ex text message body). Type any character, and then press two keys simultaneously. The accented character window will pop up. 

Edited April 4, 2020 by D1ggs

[Craig 1,435]

On 3/30/2020 at 5:00 AM, Derecho said:

So the big question now is; has the keyboard driver and associated behaviour stabilised? What's its current status? Can I just use the same FinQwerty layout as before? I'm led to believe that I can't, due to the various changes. In fact, the message I quoted seems to insinuate that there's been a regression in functionality, in that the Fnkey now mimics the Shift key. Is this true? Is this on end-user level with the built-in layouts, and thus customisable with a different layout, or is this on driver level? I've read through all pages of this topic and I was trying to keep an accurate picture of the state it ended up at, but I got completely lost :). I'm fine with writing another keyboard layout similar to how I did for FinQwerty, if it's a one-off effort that I can keep using for the foreseeable while. But, is it still possible to have FnKey operate separately from the Shift keys, and is it possible to do so in an immediate, as in not dead/sticky, way? And what is the current procedure for making such a layout? I've seen bits about a special file with kernel keycodes being placed in a specific location somewhere, is that the recommended way? Will this persist across reboots? What about reflashes? Can I simply push this file via adb without any further modifications to the ROM? I really hope that it's at least possible to get my keyboard working again on the new build, as I have it working now, because I'd call it perfect as it currently is. Only too bad about the missing backlight and gyroscope-based orientation (rather than slider-based), but the typing capabilities do matter more to me

 

Since nobody has tried to answer, I'll do my best.

I don't know if it has stabilized, but seems to be working well, so unless anyone complains, I dont think they'll change it.

No, you cannot use FinQWERTY layouts intended for stock with Lineage.   Some keys are mapped in hardware different than stock, i.e.

physical: stock/lineage/sailfishos

F (fxtec logo): Home / Meta / Super

Sym: Unused / Right-Alt / Slash

Slantarrows:  something / weird nothing / right-alt

Ctrl: Right Control / Left Control / forgot to check

Esc: BACK / Esc / Esc

So to use a finqwerty layout, you'd have to modify it it for the new keys in Lineage.  But you may not need to.  You can use the included AOSP layouts.  They use right-alt (SYM) as the modifier key for additional characters, and change the function of some keys, similar to how the same layout works on a PC.

If you wanted to modify finqwerty layout, you couldn't use slant arrow as modifier the way it is currently implemented in Lineage.   The way lineage is now, the slant arrow keys seem to be handled at the driver level, and you can customize its behaviour in combination with other keys in your own user-editable layout file.  Already a few things are built in, like question mark and slash from P & L, PgUp/PgDn/Home/End from arrows, ins from del, etc,  plus you can optionally enable F1-F12 on the number row, or lock with space bar.  But you have the ability to define slant arrow key combinations however you want, independent of layout.  (The way the slant arrow key combinations work, is they're changing what key is sent to the layout.  So for example if you assign slant arrow + X to be the letter a, then if you have a layout that changes a to á then what you'll actually see when you press it is á.  )

In the future tdm has said we'll be able to customize gpio keys including slant arrow keys.  I'm sure many people would like to make the right one into another right-alt (for use with layouts besides english); I'd probably like to make it slash.  Probably you'll be able to make it into whatever stock uses (something nonstandard I forgot).

Back on the topic of the layouts included with Lineage - I don't know where the maps are documented, but you can figure them out by trial and error.  Test every letter to see whats different then normal, then try every letter with SYM to see what's there.   I've tried US-International and most of the special keys are exactly where I expect them to be as I'm already familiar with that layout from pc.

A couple weeks ago I posted something on reddit summarizing some of the keyboard stuff and other lineage features (taken from the thread I started here):

The only other thing to add is at some point I believe mccreary spoke of including finqwerty or asanti (photon q) layouts with lineage, but that doesnt seem to have happened.  Not sure if its still a thought, but of course if they did, I'm sure they'd modify them for use with Pro¹'s keys available to Lineage.

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by Craig

[tdm 2,322]

Hey all, it's been a while since I've been here so I wanted to pop in and give an update.

 

I live in Seattle, which has been under stay-at-home orders for over two weeks and will continue until at least the end of this month.  I have a wife and 4 boys at home, and we are all healthy.  But it is difficult to get any work done between the constant interruptions.  In addition, I have been given a new project at work that will take a week or two to complete.  So I'm afraid that I won't have much of any time to work on the Pro1 until at least the middle of April, but more likely the start of May.  But rest assured I will continue to work on it when things get closer to normal again.

 

Stay safe and healthy out there!

 

[Hook 2,821]

@tdm  Thank you for whatever you can do whenever you can do it.  Right now, the number one priority is taking care of yourself and your family. Bless you for all you have already done!

Cheers!

[Derecho 7]

On 4/4/2020 at 5:31 AM, Craig said:

 

Since nobody has tried to answer, I'll do my best.

...

 

Thank you very much for the exhaustive reply, just the information I was looking for.

Sounds like I might need to put some work into it, but that I can get my keyboard working again as I've now gotten used to. I don't think I'll adjust FinQwerty for this again, it probably makes more sense if that maps with stock and adding stock/LOS variants to every FxTec layout would result in a mess. So I'm thinking of doing it the way this ROM lets us do it, at the driver level. That way I can have both slanted arrows combine with any of the character keys if I'm understanding correctly. I'll try out the built-in layouts that you mention first, but I expect the PL programmer's layout won't be part of it, and to be frank it is actually more comfortable to use the slanted arrow keys for it rather than Sym, as then you can use either hand for for the modifier key.

I'll flash the latest testbuild soon then, reinstall and reconfigure everything again, and I'll have a crack at the keyboard mapping. Once I get it working I'll share it of course. It'll be nice to have keyboard backlight working, the fingerprint sensor less hyperactive, the rotation working better (actually, I'm not sure, has that been implemented, sliding on rotation?), the dead zones on the curved parts of the screen, and an informative WiFi signal indicator :). And whilst my audio generally works fine and crackle-free, I do have a little issue with the volume being inconsistent between program runs, so hopefully that'll be sorted too with the upgrade. And those fancy keyboard shortcuts and other improvements I missed seem very interesting as well :).

[Derecho 7]

Alright, so I have testbuild 11 flashed, and it appears to be working well. I've followed the instructions for an update, so my recovery image remains unchanged at from testbuild 2. Do I want to upgrade this or have there been no changes to the recovery image?

It's great to see all the improvements and fixes that build 11 comes with, especially the orientation switch on the keyboard slideout makes the phone feel so much faster, though there are many more welcome changes.

Regarding the keyboard I've been able to try out some initial things. There appears to indeed be a default Polish keyboard layout in LOS itself, which does work as expected with the Sym key acting like PC's AltGr key. This way all Polish characters are technically typable. It is however not very practical though, as I feared already. Since the Sym key is only present on the left of the keyboard, it makes over half the special keys very tedious to type. Polish has special characters on E, O, A, S, L, Z, X, C and N. To press both Sym and E, A, S, Z, X or C is pretty much impossible unless I'm resorting to some finger acrobatics. Now, if I understand correctly, we can make custom mappings at driver level for any FN + character combination. This would mean I can have all the Polish special characters show up when using the Slanted arrows. [Edit: Actually, I can't do this. There are obviously no DEFINEs in the kernel for the special characters, only for characters commonly found on keyboards physically.] There is one conflict though; the L key. If I remap FN+L to be ł (or Ł if combined with Shift) [Edit: Yeah so this isn't actually possible I think], I'm losing the / key. So I thought, alright well, in order not to lose any keys maybe the easiest solution would be to swap the functionality of the slanted arrows and the Sym key. That way all the yellow printed on the characters would be addressable at least via Sym (also via Shift for most), and it'd make the special characters that are used more often during regular conversation accessible via both the slanted arrows on either side of the keyboard. This however, does not appear to be possible with the current driver from what I see. Am I seeing this right? Does this mean I have to effectively modify the driver source code to swap these round and compile my own LOS image? Whilst I can do that, it does make things quite unmaintainable, especially once this all ends up in LOS official as for every update I'd need to pull in changes, merge them with the custom driver, and recompile an image. I do understand the motivation for the changes as they've happened since build 2 / stock image, and the consistency with PC keyboards and allowing LOS default layouts to work makes sense from a theoretical point of view, but with the physical Sym key being only accessible on one side of the keyboard (and being non-sticky), it does result in a very real practical issue for probably most keyboard layouts that actually do make use of the AltGr modifier. I'd argue it's less of an inconvenience to use either the Sym or FxTec-logo key for the yellow keys, as all yellow keys on the left side of the keyboard can also be inputted via Shift anyway.

What can I currently do to make this work a little better? Are there easier ways than recompiling the image, to swap the slanted arrows and the Sym key? Can I make the Sym key sticky perhaps? It'd still result in slower combination input than using the slanted arrows, but at least it'd be usable. Or maybe I can change the behaviour of just the right slanted arrrow key at least, somehow? I'm willing to work on several different layers of customisation, driver level or keyboard mapping or whatever, but ideally I'd be looking for something that lets me use the slanted arrows as AltGr and something else (Sym or FxTec logo) for the yellow printed keys, and something maintainable for future releases.

Edited April 7, 2020 by Derecho
New insight

[Craig 1,435]

tdm has said he plans to make the gpio keys configurable.    When that happens, you could make the right slantarrow into another right-alt, which will help with non-english layouts.

https://github.com/tdm/android_device_fxtec_pro1/issues/36

 

[Derecho 7]

1 hour ago, Craig said:

tdm has said he plans to make the gpio keys configurable.    When that happens, you could make the right slantarrow into another right-alt, which will help with non-english layouts.

https://github.com/tdm/android_device_fxtec_pro1/issues/36

 

I see. That sounds like an improvement that'd occur in the further future though. When it does happen though, I'd probably set both slanted arrow keys to AltGr and set Sym to Fn, rather than just modify the right slanted arrow, for sake of consistency.

For now I've been looking at what I can do to make things work better in the short-term, as this is my only phone actually. It appears a quick swap of DEFINEs in the driver and a custom recompilation won't be possible, as while I have found the DEFINE for the slanted arrow keys (one define though, so my first impression is that they're physically on the same GPIO line) I haven't found such a DEFINE for the Sym key, leading me to suspect that the Sym key is handled by the key controller. So that doesn't appear to be an achievable goal and the only proper way to swap the key's effects would be to implement the improvement as described by the ticket. Another option I'm considering for now, is to make Sym sticky. That might be doable with considerably less effort and thus would be available on a shorter term. Not as convenient as using the slanted arrow keys, but it beats holding the key down and using the touchscreen for a special character. (Which, BTW, is actually a very welcome improvement over testbuild 2 where this wasn't possible at all).

[Craig 1,435]

On 2/27/2020 at 4:16 PM, tdm said:

I'm implementing the UI for device specific features. So a couple of questions...

 

The keyboard map option should show a few common, sane, useful options. Like, say, making FN plus top row keys send F#. What other useful options do you think should be there?

I use the Fn+Space for power, and it works fine.  But what I've realized would be easier would be Fn+Ctrl, can do it with one finger.   Right now I have to make this two finger kinda peace sign type shape.  

Anyways this is trivial nothing, just a thought I had.

[Craig 1,435]

On 2/17/2020 at 6:39 AM, tdm said:

 

Thank you for your consideration.  🙂  I generally don't accept donations when I've been given a device for development.  But I've spent a lot of time on this device.  Here's my paypal: https://www.paypal.me/tdmcode

 

You should include this on your lineage page too, had to search for it.

[Hook 2,821]

Bumping this thread.    I finally jumped to Lineage and it is wonderful-- a far more finished OS than stock.  And, lol, if I can install it, anyone can, but the folks on Discord, particularly @Craig are very helpful.  Rooted too.  Never going back.

 

Sent more beers to tdm...  great job, sir.  Can't wait until you are back on it.

[spam71 55]

Pro1 under LOS is great. Unfortunately just after I dealt with most issues (especially volume tweaking and forcing 24-bit headphones output), USB port broke I now I'm waiting for releasing lockdown in GB - support/repair center doesn't work until then.

[igor 9]

15 hours ago, spam71 said:

Pro1 under LOS is great.

Yes, absolutely. And finally I got my Pro1, I installed Lineage but I could not find any unknown bugs. Everything seems to work. Even my USB-ethernet-adapter with the chipset "Asix AX88772B" runs out of the box. Thanks to @tdm

 

[igor 9]

 But in general I am little bit disappointed that some very usefull functions of Lineage 14.1 disappeared in Lineage 16.0 😭:

1. removed single hand mode: https://www.lineageos.org/Last-Week-in-LineageOS-4/ This feature would be very useful very huge phones ("tablets") like the pro1. Now you need root ("Magisk"), "Edxposed" and a third party app/module e.g. : https://github.com/zhougy0717/Niwatori for getting this function.

2. removed profile setting function of lineage DeskClock ("Clock" app's "Tasker"-function [attached image] was my favourite lineage killer feature   😭  )And again, in order to compensate this lack you must root your device and install an additional app for example "easer" https://f-droid.org/de/packages/ryey.easer/

Maybe @tdm could help to reinstall these removed functions for LOS 17.x ?!

 

 

[Linkandzelda 44]

Any way to improve front camera quality with LOS? In stock and LOS, the front camera quality when using WhatsApp or Messenger video calls looks worse than any camera released in the last 15 years. It makes no sense because if I point the camera at me using the actual camera app it looks ok.

[ladar 2]

@tdm or @Loader009 could either of you provide instructions for how to build my own images? I don't have my device yet, but at least I can automate the image building process.

Note I also opened up a GitHub issue with this request.

P.S. Has anyone tried using the Pro 1 on Sprint? Or better yet, the Pro 1 on Sprint with Lineage?

[Rob. S. 1,616]

Just on a side note 🙂 and well aware that the SafetyNet issue may prove to become a showstopper for me regarding the Pro¹ (still I'll try) – a few days ago, an old tablet that I was using strictly in-house, mainly for editing the household's shopping list which is stored on a self-hosted Nextcloud instance, became unusable because it tried now outdated SSL/TLS versions to connect, and so I swapped some tablets, and of course one needed to be replaced with a new one. The new one became a cheap Amazon Fire HD 8, and I was (as I only read later) lucky to get an old enough serial number which still comes with an unlocked/unlockable bootloader. This was my first own attempt (my second HTC Desire Z I bought second-hand and it came with LineageOS the gave it a new life for a good period) to put an alternative ROM onto an Android device, and it really went well – not only did I get rid of that Amazon homepage which was installed as the tablet's operating system, I never had an Android device that was as snappy with just 1 GB of RAM. Really, really nice 🙂

Edited May 14, 2020 by Rob. S.

[D1ggs 141]

Update to the latest version of stock. It works fine. Might need to lock the bootloader. 

Edited May 15, 2020 by D1ggs

[Hook 2,821]

6 hours ago, D1ggs said:

Update to the latest version of stock. It works fine. Might need to lock the bootloader. 

Isn't this in the wrong thread?