Which On-Screen Keyboard for Touch Screen Application?

Question

I'm developing an application in C++ that's partially driven by touch-screen on Windows XP Embedded. Some text entry will be necessary for the user. So far we've been using the standard Windows On-Screen Keyboard (osk.exe), but there are two main problems:

1. It's rather small on a higher resolution screen which will probably make it hard for users to hit the right keys
2. It's too "ugly" for the customer, who'd like a slicker on-screen keyboard that integrates better with the custom look-and-feel of the application so far.

Therefore I'm looking for alternatives for the Windows On-Screen Keyboard (osk.exe) that allow a larger size of buttons and can be skinned. Ideally it would have a BSD-like license for unburdened integration into a commercial app, but a royalty-free commercial solution could work.

Do you know of any such applications, or have you had a similar project where you solved the issue in another way?

Answer 1

We are using Click-N-Type for our systems. It is completely resizable. It has some customization possibilities, but I never tried them. We use it on "normal" Windows XP, but it should work on Windows XP embedded also.

Answer 2

I know this question is tagged 'c++', but here's an option for .Net that I found and integrated with less than 5 minutes work. (I've looked, and there isn't a .Net flavour of this question, and I guess it could be ported to C++ with very little effort too).

It uses the standard Windows On-Screen Keyboard (osk.exe), resizes it, docks it to the bottom of the screen and removes the title and menu bars, all from one call in your application.

The Code Project - Manage Windows XP On Screen Keyboard

The download is a single VB.Net class.