Virtual Keyboard and Layout

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi Arjen,

On Monday, July 04, 2011 14:12:44 Arjen Hiemstra wrote:
> Right now, at least on OpenSUSE Active uses the plasmaboard as a popup for
> the virtual keyboard. In my opinion, this works great.
> 
> I have just one request to make here: Would it be possible to add arrow
> keys to the layout? This is one of the things I miss most on almost all
> the virtual keyboards I have encountered so far. Simply being able to
> press
> right/left/up/down to navigate a text area is in my opinion critical for
> all text input, especially on a virtual keyboard where it is even easier
> to enter the wrong character. In addition, it would allow me to use
> up/down in konsole to reuse the previous command. :p If it is an issue
> with no one having the time to implement it, I am willing to take a look
> at the code if someone can point me in the right direction.

Yes, I think it's just that nobody has looked into this yet. The changes you 
propose sound like a good idea.

> Also, I recall some discussion on #active about replacing the plasmaboard
> with the MeeGo virtual keyboard. If I can be so bold: Please do not do
> this! I have been doing stuff with MeeGo for the last few months and while
> several things are quite nice, I would not count the virtual keyboard
> among them. I am not exactly sure what the issue is with it, but I
> personally find it far easier to enter text using the plasmaboard than the
> MeeGo keyboard.

I haven't gotten it to work anyway as it requires a bunch of components, and I 
didn't find any suitable documentation how to build it. So of course I 
couldn't try it, and can't sensibly say if it works better or not. I'll trust 
you on this one, but we should probably keep an eye on Maliit, since it's very 
actively developed. Maybe it becomes better in the future, Plasmaboard seems 
to have an edge on maturity as of now.

The code for Plasmaboard is in kde:kdeplasma-addons/applets/plasmaboard. The 
keyboard layout is defined in .xml Files, that allow loading different 
profiles, based on screen size for example. There's a bunch of custom keys, 
among which also arrow keys, which can be added to the XML files. The 
functionality itself, and interaction seems to be mostly done in widget.cpp.

> If it is an issue about maintenance, again, I am willing to do some work on
> the plasmaboard to make it more feature-complete. 

That would be very welcome :)

> There are, I think,
> currently four things that the MeeGo keyboard offers that the plasmaboard
> misses:
> 
> - Locking of "function"/caps lock by double tapping, similar to how it is
> done on the n900.
> - Swipe down to hide the keyboard.

I thought of a close button, but swipe also seems like a nice gesture for this 
(albeit a bit less discoverable).

> - Swipe left/Swipe right to change keyboard layout.
> 
> Of these, the first two seem trivial to implement. The last one seems more
> tricky, depending on how the current keyboard determines its layout.

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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