This is actually something I am interested in as well. I am learning how to create discourse plugins because I want to create a collaborative mandarin dictionary. Its quite a big project, so I am creating these smaller plugins first that have similar features so I can experiment on how to implement the whole thing. We can not use the google virtual keyboard, because it seems like its not an open source library. But a quick google search shows that there are open source virtual keyboard solutions: for example I just came across this one: Virtual Keyboard
I think the big downside of these keyboards is that the typing is very slow. So usually if I want to type in a different language I install something like unikey for vietnamese for example or sunpinyin for mandarin. I expect that most of my users will be able to type in their language so I am not planning to add a virtual keyboard. But I also want to have a way to input pinyin and zhuyin with tones. I still havent figured what to do about this. Which languages are you working with?
2 Likes