Wanted: keyboard input for iPad/iPhone

Longtime LK Lurker here. Dan said:
> my sense is that one could hack a visible or non-visible text field
> in the dom and give it focus.

I was surprised to get this working on the iPad simulator. JavaScript can invoke the iPad's soft keyboard on a single or multiline <form> element. Example:
http://heartofland.com/apps/readRTouch/focustest.html
call: document.scratchForm.scratchText.focus();

Might also work outside a <form> element.

-Chris

p.s. I was surprised because Safari doesn't let JS generate keyboard events. The arrow keys are missing from all iPad/iPhone soft keyboards. This means 98% of HTML5 games are unplayable. Does anyone know how to make iPad/iPhone "hear" keyboard presses via JavaScript?

Chris -

Yayy.  Thanks for piping up.
You get the Minuteman Award for the day!
I hope we can turn it around to something fun for your iPad.

Thanks again

        - Dan
------------------------------------

[from an off-list message...]

>Dan - allow me to use up my Minuteman Minutes.

Good news, Chris:  we're making new ones every minute.  Keep it coming.

> I've been following the MIDI conversation closely and wanted to recommend this applet for testing JS sessions and ON/OFF:
>http://tones.wolfram.com/

Very cool.  Thanks.  Need some time to absorb this.

>Also, I checked, and the current Windows Multitouch API maxes out at 2 touches. Contrast Safari on iPad and iPhone, which give a JS applet a rich set of multitouch information. Am I crazy, or are iPhone/iPad the only platforms capable of delivering 3-finger piano chords to a Web Application?

Well, I've never really looked to Windows for leadership ( DGMS ;-).

I am favorably impressed with the usability of multitouch is for typing on the iPad, especially in landscape mode.

I was much into pen computing back in the 80's (the original Fabrik was aimed at Pen computing) and, until now, I've thought of touch as an inferior alternative due to the coarseness of the pointing (and the force required on resistive overlays).  But being a lover of shotgun sports, I should have seen what was coming.  Fingers may be coarse, but they are incredibly fast and they tap a wonderful intuitive part of the brain.  It's much bigger than I thought... I think ;-)

Anyway, that's what has me going with LK and the iPad.

        - Dan