How to make Textbox Focus Prompt Keyboard Input

Question

This is my first WPF project and I'm attempting to create an application for my engineers. They will be using a Tablet PC with Windows 8. They execute the application and inspect a machine to verify if it has some issues.

I made this application using winforms but I couldn't get the keyboard input to pop up and let me type in stuff. So I switched to WPF (since I will need to provide a signature capture as well). This is what I was looking for when tapping on the textbox (in red):

I started by creating a textbox just to see if the keyboard layout would pop up. The only way I could pop up the input panel is by using the following code:

Private Sub TextBox1_TouchDown(sender As Object, e As System.Windows.Input.TouchEventArgs) Handles TextBox1.TouchDown
    Process.Start("TabTip.exe")
End Sub

There has to be an easier way ... I must be missing something completely. Is there another control I can use to make the keyboard input pop up automatically? Without having to provide code?

Answer 1

Maybe you should use a Custom WPF Control that mimics a keyboard like, WPF Touch Screen Keyboard because working from a managed enviroment like .Net to the nativw Windows API is a bit difficult.

Also have you tried a Windows 8 Metro application I think in there is trasparent to the programmer the use of keyboard.