devkitPro

I like the example project that lets you print to both the top and bottom screen, very handy.

"I can get example projects that use the keyboard (like examples/nds/input/keyboard/keyboard_stdin) to work ok."
"I can get example projects that print to both screens (like examples/nds/Graphics/Printing/print_both_screens) to work ok."

What I'm trying to figure out is how to use the keyboard on the bottom screen and be able to print text to both the top screen and the top part of the bottom screen (that isn't covered by keyboard) or anything at all really as a way to be able to do both of these things in the one example project. (any mode or screen settings whatsoever)

If there is a better example project I should be looking at I'm open to suggestions - I'm just trying to do a small text project with a keyboard in it, and printing to both screens

source?
i looked at the examples not to long ago.

You'll probably need to use consoleInit function once for each screen (using iprintf and printf for bottom, top writing).
About limiting the bottom text lines, you'll need to do that by hand.

While not a direct example about this, you may find it useful to look at my project at the following link. Specifically, the "interpreter_debugPrinter.c" file may be of some use to you, as it's using the top screen for debugging, as well as the "interpreter_dsSystem.c" file because of the keyboard features used there.

https://github.com/gemisis/ASM-Interpreter

Hope this helps at least a little bit!

-GEMISIS