How to get KDE virtual keyboard on Debian

[Duncan]

Yvan Masson posted on Mon, 20 Mar 2023 20:39:23 +0100 as excerpted:

> Hi list,
> 
> Using Debian testing, I can not find how to enable virtual keyboard.
> I installed package `qtvirtualkeyboard-plugin` and it works with SDDM,
> but not within KDE.
> 
> When I go to KDE preferences, there is something strange:
> - If running with Wayland, there is a "Input Devices -> Virtual
> Keyboard" section, but "None" is the only choice.
> - If running with X11, there is no "Virtual Keyboard" section inside
> "Input Devices".
> 
> Do I need to install a specific package? Or should I configure
> something?

No real answer here, but I've wondered the same -- at idle-curiosity-
priority-level, so I hadn't even looked for candidate packages until your 
post prodded me to do so.  Unfortunately, here on gentoo I come up with 
only the same single plausible package you tried, qtvirtualkeyboard, so no 
help there.

And I too get only "none" as a wayland option (no X besides xwayland 
installed), tho I imagine that's to be expected without whatever virtual 
keyboard component installed.

Three other possibilities come to mind, however:

1) Maybe it's a stub that for now only works on plasma-mobile, stubbed out 
on the desktop as they intend to add the functionality there, but haven't 
yet.  With frameworks 5 feature-frozen as they prepare frameworks/plasma6, 
if this is the case, it could remain so until 6. (Regarding 6, gentoo/kde 
dev comments suggest it's not expected until late year.  And of course the 
first releases can't be expected to be as stable as the mature 5, so an 
actually usable release is more likely sometime next year, depending on 
your stability expectations.)

2) (Less likely?) Perhaps the virtual keyboard doesn't show up if there's a 
physical keyboard plugged in.  Since you say it's working in SDDM, what 
about unplugging the physical keyboard before logging in there, using the 
virtual keyboard to login, and seeing if by some chance it continues to 
work and/or populates the kcm with something other than "none", then?

3) Maybe the virtual keyboard has to be run as a system service?  But I'd 
guess that's how you're getting it to work in SDDM, so I don't know...  
Maybe it needs to be configured as a user service as well (started by the 
systemd user instance)?

Whatever the case, I'm curious on the resolution, so I'll be following this 
thread with interest as well.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman