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Maliit provides a flexible and cross-platform input method framework. It has a plugin-based client-server architecture where applications act as clients and communicate with the Maliit server via input context plugins. The communication link currently uses D-Bus. Maliit is an open source framework (LGPL 2) with open source plugins (BSD).
The framework provides two distinct plugin interfaces:
The Maliit Architecture provides an abstraction that enables application developers to concentrate on application logic, with the option to extend input method interaction with Libmaliit, while plugin developers are insulated from applications. Neither plugins nor applications know directly of each other, nor do they have to use the same toolkits. For example, plugins written for Qt or MeeGo Touch applications will work just as well for GTK+ applications, without any modifications.
The framework is responsible for switching to specific plugins, depending on the application and device state. For example, when opening a hardware keyboard, Maliit will automatically search for a HWKB-capable plugin and activate it. Additionally, plugins can trigger a plugin or language layout change. Plugins announce their services via a plugin description interface, the list of languages they support, whether they are on-screen or HWKB plugins (or both).
The following base classes are needed to implement an input method UI plugin:
Libmaliit is an input method extension library for Qt — use it to add application support for screen rotation and attribute extensions.
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