Windows 8 Desktop App: Open tabtip.exe to secondary keyboard (for numeric textbox)

Question

We're working on a desktop WPF app that runs on Windows 7 tablets and are adding some Surface Pro units with windows 8 to the mix.

We noticed immediately that the little keyboard icon no longer displays when a TextBox receives focus. We solved it by running "tabtip.exe" on the MouseDown event for all TextBoxes.

We have some numeric textboxes though (quantity for an item on an order), and want to open the on-screen keyboard for numeric entry, but it opens with qwerty keys by default.

I have been searching extensively for any command-line arguments I can pass to tabtip.exe to change its input mode, but have had no luck. This seems like a trivial task with a metro-style app, but impossible on the desktop side.

Is there a command-line argument to tabtip.exe I can use to accomplish this?

Answer 1

Following on from the answer @tymes provided, here is a quick console app which demonstrates opening the keyboard and changing various settings (C#).:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using Microsoft.Win32;

namespace CSharpTesting
{
    class Program
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// The different layout types on the virtual keyboard.
        /// </summary>
        public enum KeyboardLayoutMode
        {
            Default,
            ThumbLayout,
            Handwriting
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// The registry key which holds the keyboard settings.
        /// </summary>
        private static readonly RegistryKey registryKey = Microsoft.Win32.Registry.CurrentUser.CreateSubKey("Software\\Microsoft\\TabletTip\\1.7");

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            SetKeyboardDockedMode(true);
            SetKeyboardLayoutMode(KeyboardLayoutMode.ThumbLayout);
            ShowKeyboard(true);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Shows the onscreen keyboard.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="killExistingProcess">If true, kill any existing TabTip.exe process.</param>
        public static void ShowKeyboard(bool killExistingProcess)
        {
            if (killExistingProcess)
            {
                // If the user presses the close button on the keyboard then TabTip.exe will still run in the background. If we have made registry
                // changes to the keyboard settings, they don't take effect until the process is started again so killing this ensures the keyboard
                // will open with our new settings.
                foreach (var process in Process.GetProcessesByName("TabTip"))
                {
                    process.Kill();
                }
            }

            string onScreenKeyboardPath = @"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ink\TabTip.exe";
            Process.Start(onScreenKeyboardPath);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Sets if the keyboard is in docked or floating mode.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="isDocked">If true set to docked, if false set to floating.</param>
        private static void SetKeyboardDockedMode(bool isDocked)
        {
            registryKey.SetValue("EdgeTargetDockedState", Convert.ToInt32(isDocked), RegistryValueKind.DWord);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Changes the layout mode of the keyboard.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="mode">The layout mode to use.</param>
        private static void SetKeyboardLayoutMode(KeyboardLayoutMode mode)
        {
            switch (mode)
            {
                case KeyboardLayoutMode.Handwriting:
                    registryKey.SetValue("KeyboardLayoutPreference", 0, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                    registryKey.SetValue("LastUsedModalityWasHandwriting", 1, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                    break;
                case KeyboardLayoutMode.ThumbLayout:
                    registryKey.SetValue("KeyboardLayoutPreference", 1, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                    registryKey.SetValue("LastUsedModalityWasHandwriting", 0, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                    // 0 = small, 1 = medium, 2 = large
                    registryKey.SetValue("ThumbKeyboardSizePreference", 2, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                    break;
                default:
                    registryKey.SetValue("KeyboardLayoutPreference", 0, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                    registryKey.SetValue("LastUsedModalityWasHandwriting", 0, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
                    break;
            }
        }
    }
}