I now have a working iOS 8 Custom Keyboard to input Chinese, and I am looking for the possibility to use this keyboard with external bluetooth keyboard.
My first question is if anyone has successfully used external keyboard with custom keyboard? I am asking because when I connect my Apple wireless keyboard to my iPad Air, the software keyboard won't show up hence I have no way to tell which keyboard I am using. Also using command + space does not switch to my own keyboard.
I then tried to use external keyboard with built-in Chinese Zhuyin Keyboard and it doesn't work, it just outputs Zhuyin symbols but no Chinese words to select from.
I can understand that external keyboard won't work for custom keyboards because the custom keyboard keys must be somehow associated with the external keyboard keys. However, I think at least the built-in keyboard should work.
So my second question is if anyone has tried to use external bluetooth keyboard to input text using built-in keyboard other than English, preferably for languages that needs a mapping table(for example, Chinese and Japanese, you input some symbols and there should be a list of words that you can choose from).
I've used an Apple bluetooth keyboard against my phone with both IOS7 and IOS8 using English, Chinese Simplified pinyin KB, Chinese Traditional pinyin KB, and Japanese Romanji KB. IOS7 worked great.
IOS8 seems wonky.
In IOS8 using the Notes app, I've noted a problem where the picklist is actually hidden behind the Garbage Pail icon / Forward to Email etc icon / New Note icon. If you flick the screen with a finger the picklist shows up. Also there is something wrong with the input, it flips out, and kind of duplicates what is being typed. I'm not sure if it's because the picklist is hidden and I can't see what I'm doing. Furthermore, the picklist ALWAYS is there even when not having typed something, showing the most common characters for (I, YOU, shi4, etc.) This prevents me from typing numbers because numbers are assigned to the picklist values. Numeric input requires a revert back to the English KB.