Write some Software

Good Day, I have the Raspberry PI B+ and have been using it to run OSMC. I have installed the Disk Image (2016.10-1) provided on their website in order to run OSMC on my Pi. [login to view URL] I am currently using a USB wireless Keyboard an mouse but the application I am now doing required a more robust User Interface and as such I would like to use the GPIO Header on the Pi to control OSMC. I would like to connect up the following operational buttons: > Power On > Up > Down > Enter > Play/ Pause > Rewind > Stop > Return to Menu > Volume Up > Volume Down > Skip I am very comfortable with electronics hardware as I am an Electrical Engineer, my programming knowledge on Linux and even more so on the Pi is not great though so don't want to spend time on this aspect of the project when I know there are better programmers available out there to implement this. So I am not sure on certain things like whether the button connection should be made high or low for the GPIO input signal. I am hoping this sort of detail can be discussed so I can focus on the hardware requirements while the software functionality is implemented.