Developing onscreen keyboards under Wayland for KDE Plasma

[John Ramsden]

My understanding (still trying to establish if this is correct or not) is that if I try to input something using a virtual keyboard that relies on the text-input/IME path, it will only work in applications that expose Wayland text input fields. For example, if I attempt to input text into an XWayland game - or into any application that does not support Wayland’s text-input protocol - there wouldn’t be a recognized text field for the IME to target.

This is why I’m concerned that a virtual keyboard implemented the way Plasma Keyboard is currently designed may not allow "full keyboard" functionality. It seems it would work well for text fields, but may not allow me to send arbitrary key events in the same way a physical keyboard can.

-- 
  John Ramsden

On Tue, Dec 2, 2025, at 4:37 PM, Neal Gompa wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2025 at 7:32 PM John Ramsden <ramsdenj at riseup.net> wrote:
>>
>> Beyond terminal emulators, my concern - I do not know if this is founded - is there will be some situations where I cannot input what I need. Does the application not need to be wayland aware?
>>
>
> No, this is handled by the compositor itself. Applications should not need to
> be aware of the virtual keyboard.
>
>
>
> --
> 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!