Either stop relying on EditText for reading visible character input or change code to reduce the number of issues I have with it

[Arian04]

Current situation: The user focuses an EditText (Labeled "Direct Input") and types into it. A textwatcher compares changes between the contents of the EditText after each change in the text and sends it. The intended use is for the user to keep typing characters without ever tapping on the EditText to move their cursor, as that would mess up the output.

Current issues with this:

• As stated before, if the user taps the EditText, moving their cursor in that method, it messes everything up
• It's kinda ugly just to have random characters there in that EditText as the user types
• There have been some issues with the EditText accidentally consuming input, leading to bugs
• I can't just clear the EditText after each input because that's expensive and must be run on the main thread, leading to dropped keys if the user types quickly

Proposed solutions:

1. Create a custom view that just doesn't display characters that are typed. This might also allow all the input to go straight to the onKeyDown method and consolidate the code that handles input.
2. Add some code using cursor position to get around the (currently) only known remaining issue with the EditText consuming input that I need to process. This happens when the user presses an arrow key that moves the cursor into text within the EditText, not allowing the onKeyDown function to process it, while also not modifying text, so the textwatcher doesn't pick it up either.

[Arian04]

Solution 1 seems difficult from the minimal research I've done, so I'm planning on just going with solution 2.

[Arian04]

setting android:digits="" fixes all mentioned issues, but, since the keys aren't echoed into the EditText, the textwatcher doesn't trigger. onKeyDown doesn't trigger either, so most input is broken (except arrow keys ironically).

[Arian04]

KeyListener works perfectly for this, the change will be committed and pushed once the code is cleaned up. I think previously I tried using onKeyListener which (I believe) didn't work, and I didn't try KeyListener since I didn't realize it was different from onKeyListener.

[Arian04]

Fixed in 95484db3cab5ecce0eaa9c293a02af325f8a6432 by changing the way I detect key presses