Developing onscreen keyboards under Wayland for KDE Plasma

[Justin Zobel]

On 3/12/25 10:25, John Ramsden 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?
>
> --
>   John Ramsden
>
> On Mon, Dec 1, 2025, at 3:50 PM, Justin Zobel wrote:
>> On 2 December 2025 9:48:39 am ACDT, John Ramsden 
>> <ramsdenj at riseup.net> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi,
>>     I require an on-screen keyboard with full functionality similar
>>     to what is provided by onboard. Unfortunately these types of
>>     on-screen keyboards are not found on Wayland, and plasma will be
>>     dropping X11 support in 6.8. I understand there is work being
>>     done to provide a virtual keyboard
>>     (https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-keyboard) for Wayland.
>>     Unfortunately for my use case I need something that works not
>>     only in text fields but globally, similar to the functionality
>>     you would get from a hardware keyboard. I need to be able to
>>     issue inputs into terminals, along with modifier keys etc. As far
>>     as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong) but this is
>>     not the intention of the virtual keyboards that are being
>>     provided by plasma for Wayland.
>>     The integrations to provide virtual keyboards appear to be using
>>     input-method-v1, which allows you to target text inputs. What I'm
>>     looking for is something that is globally available and allows me
>>     to interact with my computer as if I'm using a hardware keyboard.
>>     I want to be able to issue inputs without restrictions (for
>>     example trigger global shortcuts) as if I'm a regular keyboard user.
>>     I've been looking into some options for doing what I am looking
>>     to do, and I was seeking some input from plasma developers to
>>     make sure what I'm attempting to do is actually going down the
>>     supported route. I don't want to build something that is actively
>>     considered misuse of wayland, or is looked at as a security concern.
>>     I see a few options:
>>     * Pretend to be a hardware keyboard via an emulated device such
>>     as using uinput - is this looked down upon since it essentially
>>     goes around Wayland? Would plasma considered blocking something
>>     like emulated devices in the future?
>>     * Ideally use something like zwp_virtual_keyboard_v1 but this
>>     does not seem to be supported by plasma. Is there any intention
>>     to support something like this in the future?
>>     * Use XDG RemoteDesktop Portal - would this be seen as misuse of
>>     the API?
>>     Ultimately my use case is I want a keyboard that sits on my
>>     desktop and allows me to input anything a regular hardware
>>     keyboard would be able to input.
>>
>>
>> Plasma Virtual Keyboard allows input into terminal emulators like 
>> Konsole. Modifier keys I'm not sure on as I'm not at my PC but it is 
>> something that Qmlkonsole supports so it should in theory be possible 
>> to add this to PVK.
>
With all things considered, your best option to find out if it will work 
for you, is to try it.
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