Plasma-mobile: Opening the keyboard on demand.
Hi,
Most non-kde apps (gtk and qt) will not automatically open plasma-mobile's keyboard. To make these apps still usable in plasma-mobile I would like to make a script that shows/hides keyboard when pushing a physical button of the phone.
Do you know if there is any command-line allowing the show or hide the keyboard in plasma shell?
One of the applications would be to make firefox usable as a webbrowser. Indeed it seems after a few configurations and modifications it could become a very usable and very stable mobile webbrowser, in plasma-mobile.
Thank's
Activity
On Plasma Mobile you can just use Anglerfish as your webbrowser, it's interface is optimized for mobile usage. That said, the keyboard not showing up for Qt apps automatically seems like a bug. On GTK right now the keyboard does indeed not show up, I think there isn't a concensus on the the protocol and signals between them yet. You could use a GTK keyboard for that though like
matchbox-keyboard.By Bart Ribbers on 2018-10-07T21:13:43
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Thank's for your answer,
Unfortunately I cannot use Angelfish because it does not run on Nexus 5.
But anyway it would be interesting to be able to use gtk apps on plasma-mobile.
Do you mean that plasma-mobile keyboard is not generating usual linux keyboard signals or wayland input signals? Are we certain that it does not communicate with gtk? Is there a way to force showing the keyboard at least just to make some tests?
Ps: Matchbox keyboard does not work on plasma-mobile after a quick test.
By Pierre Parent on 2018-10-07T22:33:45
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In Plasma Mobile kwin_wayland is wayland server, kwin_wayland have built-in support for the QtVirtualKeyboard. However it only supports the Qt+Wayland apps and not GTK+Wayland or Qt+Xwayland applications.
What we could do is package plasma-maliit-framework and plasma-maliit-plugins and maliit inputcontext-gtk. After that export GTK_IM_MODULE=maliit , and then start the maliit server as inputmethod of kwin_wayland (Modify the kwin_wayland call to include the
--inputmethod maliit-serverIt would also need some more setup but I can't remember it right now. I will try to give it a shot later this weekend if time permits. If you decide to work on it, and need help feel free to ping me in IRC/Matrix or here.
By Bhushan Shah on 2018-10-09T06:31:29
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@bshah Thank's a lot!
Do you mean that with that technique, the keyboard could open automatically with gtk or XWayland apps?
By Pierre Parent on 2018-10-09T07:33:18
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My understanding is, that the
inputcontext-gtkwould make the keyboard open up >automatically for all GTK (3?) programs.Frankly it would be truly amazing!
I think if we could demonstrate using a real firefox usable on a phone it could raise interest from quite a few people.
I've made a page here explaining necessary configuration for Firefox 52 on plasma-mobile: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Firefox_on_Plasma_Mobile
And here is a quick (unlisted) video to show you what it looks like (for me it's already impressive): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEceelC7R3I
And if one day we package firefox 62 it would be even better: faster with quantum and we could have the firefox-multi-touch-zoom extention giving fuild zoom in and out.
By Pierre Parent on 2018-10-12T08:07:52
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Frankly I'm not sure what parts of that wiki page has something Plasma Mobile specific. It's probably better to remove that reference and just focus on Firefox on mobile devices.
Anyways, I don't see Firefox as it is right now as a long term solution for browsers on mobile devices. It's interface just isn't made for it, and editing the config files to make it at least a little bit usable is just a hack in my eyes. I much rather have proper mobile browsers like Angelfish or some proper mobile UI for Firefox.
That said, this is unrelevant for the current issue and we should keep it focussed on the input methods.
By Bart Ribbers on 2018-10-14T10:22:11
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Great work @pparent! I think having Firefox on mobile UIs does make a lot of sense, even if we need to pre-configure it to make it usable on mobile. But this is really off-topic so I won't go into detail here. I've renamed the page to "Firefox" as @PureTryOut suggested.
By Oliver Smith on 2018-10-15T20:06:00
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I think having Firefox on mobile UIs does make a lot of sense
Sorry for a off-topic once more. Just wanted to mention I've tested today chromium (also requires a bit of conf), it's very fast, stable, has fluid zoom in and out, copy and past capacities, and everything. Just requires a good input method and it will be prefect really. I use this virtual keybord extension in the mean time but it has some problems and does not work on every site: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/virtual-keyboard/pflmllfnnabikmfkkaddkoolinlfninn
If we can get plasma-mobile keyboard to work with gtk/Xwayland apps, it would really solve the browser issue.
By Pierre Parent on 2018-10-16T05:50:37
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@bshah
I tried to compile the packages you pointed to on the device, but did not succeed. It seems beyond my scope for now.
By Pierre Parent on 2018-10-18T08:16:51
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You may see here, that I'm not the only one having this issue with plasma-mobile:
https://youtu.be/q_rU1WbJq-M?t=260
By Pierre Parent on 2019-06-15T08:56:33
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This doesn't seem much like an issue. Maybe take this to a forum?
By Mr. Beedell, Roke Julian Lockhart on 2024-05-03T13:13:02
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#108 (comment 1045854897)
@ell1e, a downvote without any substantiation isn't going to be very constructive. At least, I shan't know what to act on.
By Mr. Beedell, Roke Julian Lockhart on 2024-05-03T15:41:18
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Sorry, that was indeed bad and rude communication on my behalf. I think at the time I downvoted because a keyboard toggle button in Phosh always seems very useful to me, and I assumed your comment indicated that you don't see the utility. However, I'm now realizing maybe you just talked about something else, my apologies.
For what it's worth, a toggle button can be useful because even with automatically opening the keyboard, sometimes you just don't want to input something or you may want to use an app-wide keyboard shortcut (that isn't bound to a specific widget). In both cases, manually closing or manually opening it is required to proceed.
By Ellie on 2024-05-03T15:26:53
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#108 (comment 1892018480)
@ell1e:
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For what it's worth, a toggle button can be useful because even with automatically opening the keyboard, sometimes you just don't want to input something or you may want to use an app-wide keyboard shortcut (that isn't bound to a specific widget). In both cases, manually closing or manually opening it is required to proceed.
I agree. That's an annoyance for me on AOSP. Does a relevant issue exist? I ask because (as aforestated) this issue was really a discussion, and about specifically a way to work around this, rather than remediate it.
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Sorry, that was indeed bad and rude communication on my behalf. I think at the time I downvoted because a keyboard toggle button in Phosh always seems very useful to me, and I assumed your comment indicated that you don't see the utility. However, I'm now realizing maybe you just talked about something else, my apologies.
I don't consider the positive and negative reactions inherently problematic, so it wasn't rude. I merely wasn't able to discuss this in a manner useful to you without something to go on.
By Mr. Beedell, Roke Julian Lockhart on 2024-05-03T15:43:44
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