Text Input in iOS

[josh_on]

Does TLF except text input on iOS devices?  Can someone point me to documentation about this?

Thanks.

[Jin-Huang]

There are *iphone OS* option when you create a new project in Flash pro CS 5 and 5.5, also mobile project option in FlashBuilder 4.5. In all kinds of projects, you can use TLF. We are improving the performance of TLF to make it work well on mobile device.

Flex project created in FlashBuilder published onto iOS is not released officially, I think there may be no official document.

For *iphone OS* in Flash pro, there is a document named *Building ADOBE AIR Applications with the Packager for iPhone*. Pls Google and download it. For more info, pls search on http://labs.adobe.com/.

Jin

[josh_on]

Thanks Jin,

I had just successfully published one of our projects on an iPod touch - and we were really impressed at how much worked straight away.  We were also impressed with the performance.  However one think that did not work was text input into a TLF field.  I published from a trial version of CS5.  When you tap in the input field (TLF) it gets a cursor - but no virtual keyboard is brought up - is there a special function that needs to be called?

[josh_on]

I just asked this question in another forum too - sorry for the cross post:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/856470?tstart=0

[Jin-Huang]

It's a good choice to directly ask the guys who focus on flash iOS development.

[josh_on]

Unfortunately the answer was negative. Do you know of any plans to make this work?

[Jin-Huang]

-

[Jin-Huang]

I just got the info that Flash runtime team have filed TLF text input for mobile & multiscreen as a task.

[josh_on]

It is already supported on Android too.  Are you sure that they will make it work on iOS as well? I do not understand in principle why they could not - you can imagine Actionscript hacks that might be able to get it to work - such as using a TextField overlaid over the TLF input container to capture the keystrokes and pass similar events into the TextFlow. That is not something that we want to build though - because it could quickly become complicated at the level of copying pasting, insertion points etc.

[Jin-Huang]

It's a new task logged these days. So take it easy.

As we all know, Apple does not allow Flash running on iOS, while Android likes Flash a lot. There is Air Runtime on Android, but not on iOS, right? They are two different solutions. More details may be confidential.

[josh_on]

Do you have any more news about TLF input support for iOS?

[Jin-Huang]

TextField is based on the old text engine, TLF is based on FTE, the new text engine.

I think your solution is a workaround. However, what they release cannot be a workaround.

[painschen]

Here the solution.. with an ipad i get the native keyboard if i click on the text field..

It's like a keylogger, which captures the text input to the tlf text (and with the tlf text name you can use the input for your scripts)

import flash.display.Sprite;

import flash.display.Stage;

import flash.text.*;

import flash.events.*;

var myTextInput:TextField = new TextField();

myTextInput.type = TextFieldType.INPUT;

myTextInput.background = true;     

myTextInput.text = "Search..";

Object(root).addChild(myTextInput);

myTextInput.addEventListener(EVENT.CHANGE, inputEventCapture);

function inputEventCapture(event:Event):void{

    Object(root).myTLF.text = myTextInput.text;

}

[Jin-Huang]

flash.text.TextField is the only reliable text solution on IOS. But it's not TLF.

[painschen]

sure, but it's the only way at the moment and it works..

(i dont understand, why adobe didnt add softkey ios support  to TLF for the last 6 months - its very important for the most app to get a keyboard)

[AuntieChristo]

Is there any way to check on the progress of this - or give the Flash iOS team a nudge? Given that this was requested almost a year ago and yet there's still no results leaves a little to be desired...

Given the fantastic quality of TLF over the more popular iOS text editting apps I'd have thought this would be a winning ticket for Flash/Flex developers in getting some quality apps up there?