Keyboard Modes and Types

Most of the time, the user's device will have a physical key pad which will be the default for entering characters/numbers into a field/prompt.

If however, the physical keyboard can't be used or doesn't exist, the device's native touch screen will be the default when an entry is required.

In a few unique circumstances, an entry may require a specialized keyboard, called a Customized Keyboard which the developer can create and call in place of the device's native keyboard.

The most common setup for input entries is to have your Solution Explorer > Profiles > Keyboard property set to Auto-Detec (which forces input via the physical keypad.); Set your Solution Explorer > Application >graphical edit controls' KeyBoard property to None, Visible to OnFocus, and then provide an SideBar icon that shows or hides a virtual keyboard (i.e. FullAlphaNum), or the device system's touchscreen. For reference purposes, these are called soft input panels (SIPs).

Then if there are specific situations where you need to display a specific type of keyboard such as one that is alpha only or numeric only, you can either set the edit control's value to this keyboard type and also specify its mode.

Keyboard Property Definitions

The Keyboard In edit controls (i.e. Memo or TextBox control), this property sets the virtual keyboard type (i.e. custom, FullAlpha, Numeric, system etc), and depending on the mode, displays the type of keyboard defined at runtime.

None means the keyboard type is not defined, and nothing will display at runtime. System is the device's native touchscreen / soft keyboard. Custom are the customized keyboards that you designed (or imported). See Keyboards-Customize for more details.

If a type if defined, the Visibility property is enabled, and the options Never, OnClick, or OnFocus display.

Never hides the keyboard, but can be still be shown via the sidebar menu option “Show/Hide SIP”).

OnClick means that once the control has focus, if you click on the control it will then display the keyboard; This is not a toggle, it simply displays the keyboard. To hide it, you would need to use scripting or change the focus to another control.

OnFocus means when the control gets focus, it will display its keyboard.