FBA The Creator

Would it be possible to allow for a text box/input feature that hooks back to the OS/device to provide the input handlers and allows simply to call for an input box to be placed at a given location, sized at so many pixels or characters, and assigned a variable name to identify whatever the user puts into it. It might be nice to allow it to have a predefined contents/value, or be able to place restrictions on what could b passed back. This would effectively allow the existing on-screen keyboard to do it's job - or the built-in keyboard for sliding drawer systems in some phones.

One thought I had for this was possibly to use or copy the form hooks from the browser -
In fact, I think FBA might be greatly expanded if I were able to designate a mobile browser as my I/O device instead of trying to read and write directly from the screen and O/S - maybe offer the ability to use either or BOTH even as the situation warranted.

For a number of the things I am seeking to do - the ability to input data without having to pre-populate an input file is of great importance. it is the one missing piece of the puzzle. On-Screen methods to data input are just not realistic for the types of projects I would like to do.

e.g. - I have need of a utility to take in the latitude and longitude of 2 points in a variety of formats, convert it to Radians, apply the great circle algorithm, and determine the distance between the two points (also in a variety of formats (miles, KM, NM, SM, ft, meters, etc...)

Of all the pats of this project that are difficult - the only one that is even daunting is the data input section. (and getting all the data on a single screen given the pixel limitations on the HTC touch pro). I realizine this is likely not the kind of thing other people are looking to do - but if someone else had written code to do what I needed done, I would likely be using it. For now I have a spreadsheet in Pocket excel running on the Touch Pro - but I wants somethign faster, stand alone, and more professional. purpose built calculator so to speak. If it is doable.

The idea for hooks to use a web browser to provide IO functions as though it were the display and keyboard (akin to running things as a CGI Script locally in a sense - but I am thinking to have it directly hooked and not require a web server) has a multitude of applications that could really help FBA cross some boundaries into whole new arenas of functionality and solve problems related to differing screen sizes and data output formatting, etc...

Thank You in Advance for any consideration you may be able to give.

Colin D. Corcoran, Jr.