In my last article, I have introduced my new smartphone Sony Ericsson Xperia pro and mentioned the open source SSH client ConnectBot. It is a great application but it was by far not optimized for the hardware keyboard of my smartphone. I have also tried the alternative solution Irssiconnectbot, which was little better but still not really usable – important keys were missing.
So I decided to fork, add some features from Irssiconnectbot, add ssh agent from Roberto Tyley, fix several bugs, add some tweaks by myself and optimize for Sony Ericsson Xperia pro and Xperia mini pro. The new application is named VX ConnectBot.
What is different in VX ConnectBot?
- based on ConnectBot 1.7.1
- screen capture support
- character picker dialog (on-screen button and hardware SYM key)
- customizable default font size
- reset screen to default size
- single line input (on-screen button)
- new key mappings (hardware keyboard)
- ssh-agent (by Roberto Tyley)
New (hardware) key mappings:
- ALT + Up Arrow: Page Up
- ALT + Down Arrow: Page Down
- ALT + Left Arrow: Home
- ALT + Right Arrow: End
- ALT + Backspace: Del
There is an option in settings to turn on custom key mappings for Sony Ericsson Xperia (mini) pro:
- Language key (globe): CTRL (pressed 2x = ESC)
- ALT (blue rectangle) + S: pipe
- ALT (blue rectangle) + Z: backslash
- Function keys are accessed with 2x CTRL + number
- Example for pressing F1: Language (globe) + Language (globe) + ALT (blue rectangle) + Q