Feature Request: Virtual Keyboard

[Joe-Bloggs]

Hi,

I would like to request a working, reliable, virtual keyboard as part of plasma.

I have a 2 in 1 laptop and a virtual keyboard, on wayland, is by a long way the biggest feature I am missing. For my use case the lack of a virtual keyboard makes the tablet function kind of useless. I just upgraded to kde 6 and cannot get maliit to work (yet ). It appears to be installed but does not come up when a text input area is tapped. It worked on kde 5, but even then it only 2/3-worked (literally, the keyboard would not resize in portrait orientation, so only 2/3 of the keyboard was visible and usable).

So, I would like to request the integration of a virtual keyboard that works on wayland by default, ideally with modifier keys, not just letters and numbers (being able to trigger shortcuts would be huge!).

I hope developers and people who decide what features get worked on will see this; please consider making this a priority.

[arcdoom]

For real.

Its frustrating seeing all sorts of features being greenlit when the barebones accessibility stuff is being left in the dust.

There’s maliit but it only just barely functions and lacks the ability to do anything that requires a keyboard shortcut (say, ctrl+all, or ctrl + page up or down).

[Joe-Bloggs]

Indeed, I saw this thread earlier Plasma 6 and Wayland no on-screen keyboard working For some people a virtual keyboard is an absolute necessity just to be able to use their device.

[WildeGreen]

I remember awhile back during the JingOS hype (a failed(?) linux tablet os that looked really cool, it was even based on some edited version of plasma mobile) they showed a virtual keyboard with modifier keys, and I know for a fact it was some version of maliit because I saw the repo somewhere but I forgot where.

[arcdoom]

It would’ve been cool if this was figured out before forcing everyone onto wayland.

What a cruel joke.

[Joe-Bloggs]

What I find weird is that plasma already has a lot of touch features built into it (touch mode when a keyboard is disconnected, the side swipe gestures, pen support; apart from plasma mobile itself), so obviously there is thought and effort being put into making plasma usable with touch devices. It just strikes me as a weird oversight that a means of inputting text isn’t a default feature.

[redstrate]

It is figured out, Maliit works fine for me on my 2-in-1. They just have an unfortunate configuration issue. Whilst Maliit isn’t perfect, people can still use it.

[medin]

Maliit doesn’t work with non touch screens, it cannot be manually invoked, a person with special/hand disability cannot use Plasma desktop on Wayland.

[Joe-Bloggs]

Can you share your configuration? I haven’t been able to get it to work on 6.

[Duha]

Lets keep it civil please.

It is known that maliit isn’t a perfect solution that works for everyone: Plasma/Wayland Known Significant Issues - KDE Community Wiki

There is a prototype for KDE made virtual keyboard but it’ll take time. Yelling does not help.

[redstrate]

I didn’t do any special config apart from making sure it’s selected as the preferred virtual keyboard under System Settings. I use Fedora Linux, so it might be a distro configuration issue.

[darhma]

Maliit keyboard not appearing on kde6

But were you able to install it? It works for me on nixos by setting the environment variable KWIN_IM_SHOW_ALWAYS = “1”, but nixos works decidedly differently from other linux distros, so I can’t help you much more

[Joe-Bloggs]

@redstrate

I didn’t do any special config apart from making sure it’s selected as the preferred virtual keyboard under System Settings. I use Fedora Linux, so it might be a distro configuration issue.

Thanks; I have it enabled too, but no luck so far.

@Maliit keyboard not appearing on kde6

But were you able to install it? It works for me on nixos by setting the environment variable KWIN_IM_SHOW_ALWAYS = “1”, but nixos works decidedly differently from other linux distros, so I can’t help you much more

Thanks also, but that did work for me.

@Duha

There is a prototype for KDE made virtual keyboard but it’ll take time.

Is the project up somewhere where it is possible to follow its progress? Or if not do you have a sense of whether it will be months or years before it is ready?

[Duha]

@Joe-Bloggs

Is the project up somewhere where it is possible to follow its progress?

Yes it is public. I was wary to link it here because the discussion became quite toxic. So for everyone, please don’t make me regret posting the link. Be civil, don’t harass people.

Aleix Pol Gonzalez / qvk · GitLab

@Joe-Bloggs

Or if not do you have a sense of whether it will be months or years before it is ready?

That depends a lot on your use case and what you consider “ready”. For redstrate for example maliit is “ready”, because his use case is met.

I do expect the development to pick up soon.

In the meantime, since this is a brainstorm thread, share what you are missing from maliit.
What features do you want from a new virtual keyboard? Do you have examples good virtual keyboards on other platforms etc…

[Smirgl]

@Duha

In the meantime, since this is a brainstorm thread, share what you are missing from maliit.
What features do you want from a new virtual keyboard?

Support for special keys (CTRL, ALT, …) comes to my mind. At the moment I’m really restricted in using shortcuts or using a terminal in tablet mode.

[Joe-Bloggs]

@Duha

Yes it is public. I was wary to link it here because the discussion became quite toxic. So for everyone, please don’t make me regret posting the link. Be civil, don’t harass people.

Aleix Pol Gonzalez / qvk · GitLab

Thank you for the link. It is great to hear that this is being worked on! My apologies if I contributed to any toxicity, that was not at all what it sounded like in my head.

@Duha

In the meantime, since this is a brainstorm thread, share what you are missing from maliit.
What features do you want from a new virtual keyboard? Do you have examples good virtual keyboards on other platforms etc…

Missing from Maliit:

• Does not resize in portrait mode (I use my device to read pdfs and make annotations, and for that portrait orientation makes more sense).
• Escape key (I use applications that have vim editing modes, so esc is important).
• Modifier keys to trigger shortcuts.
• Resizing the height and width of the keyboard; resizing keys and space between them (less important, but it would be nice; in landscape mode maliit takes a lot of vertical space, on my device more than half the vertical space making whatever application being used harder to use).

Good keyboards on other platforms:

On Android I use Unexpected Keyboard https://github.com/Julow/Unexpected-Keyboard. One very nice feature is that you can define your own layout by editing an xml file. I don’t know if swiping would make as much sense on a 2-in-1 as it does on a phone, or small tablet, but being able to configure what extra keys are available on a long press would be great.

I have also used Hacker’s Keyboard https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard. It is great; the only thing I really missed from it was that the ‘esc’ key was not on the standard layout.

[halfashark]

I don’t think its very fair to describe genuine frustration over KDE repeatedly dropping the ball when it comes to accessibility features as “toxic”. I was poking around the half-dozen websites KDE has for projects and features (specifically accessibility) and while there was a lot of “support good people” donation buttons there was also a depressingly large amount of pages neglected for year(s).

A lot of people had their hopes up and were left hanging for years… even the donation drive ignored us.

Forgive me for my off-topic tangent but its actively upsetting watching a huge thing like KDE slap “support good people” on everything only to seemingly (from an outside perspective) ignore people who have been waiting a long time for help.

Sorry again for the tangent… I just don’t appreciate not at least acknowledging that some people have felt left behind since the wayland transition began despite assurances that this would not be the case.

[johnandmegh]

Hi - your frustration is how you feel, and that’s understandable. I do want to point out one thing that I think is relevant to the situation:

@halfashark

a huge thing like KDE

The volunteers contributing to KDE give it an impact and visibility, especially in the FOSS community, that feels pretty massive. For some context, though, KDE’s income - as reported at 2023 KDE e.V. Report - KDE e.V. - is about €350K. If they were all employed where I live in the United States, using every bit of that money would pay for about 3 1/2 full-time software developers (and of course, not all expenses are personnel, and not all personnel are developers).

With the number of folks involved in the KDE community, it’s pretty clear that most development is not happening as a result of funding from KDE e.V. itself, but from outside contributions of time and effort.

I mention that not to belittle your experience, but simply to point out that for “KDE to do something” requires, yes, coordination by the board and key individuals… but also a lot of pieces to fall into place in terms of the upstream technology stack, the availability of people who can work with that tech, use it in ways the community needs and have the time to take it from idea to finished execution, and the ability of folks to integrate all of that together into operating systems that work for end users.

There’s no doubt accessibility as a whole should be better in FOSS desktop computing - from my outsider perspective, it just seems like something that is going to need either one major entity deciding to step in and sponsor a major project to get things done faster, or a lot of incremental changes as people are able, over a longer time. In my opinion, the community can’t assume that some deep-pocketed benefactor is waiting to swoop in, so things like the donation drive are needed to help at least make sure that the latter process can still make some positive progress.

Best wishes,

[halfashark]

I’m sorry but that is not a reason nor an excuse.

I don’t wish to make it sound as if I don’t understand the situation because I do.

But what you (and many others) need to understand is that KDE’s reputation in terms of accessibility has only been growing more and more negative as promises are broken, goalposts are moved or in many cases simply forgotten as projects change hands and people come and go.

… However just because you are a charity and just because people are free to work on (or not work on) whatever doesn’t make my or anyone else’s frustration any less (and I loathe to use this term…) “valid”.

If you or anyone else don’t want people to say that KDE’s accessibility tools are lacking then they should be worked on.

If there is nobody around to work on them then the reputation of inaccessibility is truth. Scolding people for speaking up is simply punishing them for not lying or remaining silent as they are left behind.

There is no other way to describe it. People can say it isn’t fair and that everyone is trying their best and I am not claiming that they aren’t.

But at the end of the day everyone who works on KDE has chosen to leave a group of people behind. It was a choice and it was by choice.

If none of the developers want to help out and enable people to use their computers despite having accessibility issues then they as a whole chose to do so.

Again, I understand the situation but you can’t repeatedly kick the can down the road insisting that you care and not expect resentment or the bad reputation that results and to be honest as I look more into this situation in chats, forums, subreddits, etc the more I see people’s opinions on the situation grow increasingly bitter in tone.

If there is truly nothing to be done then all I can say is “that’s too bad… for KDE” because KDE’s lack of support in these circumstances are only a detriment to itself.

I would like to also add that attempts to attribute a lack of “fairness” to people who choose to speak up about these issues is in poor taste when said group of people are already at a disadvantage.

I’m very sorry but if resources are tight and people are overworked then the least you can do is to allow people to let themselves be heard instead of attempting to guilt them into silence over money.

In short:

If KDE doesn’t want to be known for its terrible and/or outright lack of accessibility features then it needs to work on them.

If it doesn’t want to or cannot work on said features then it cannot complain about the reputation it has rightfully earned.

Scolding and guilting the people already neglected by society for daring to speak up is not going to win them over.

[Roberto_Tamburrino]

In fact, if there are people who need functions and apps, we have to work on them and since they want to earn a fair amount, we could do it like this: a donation system where you choose the app and in it there must be a donation button (there should already be Donate in the help menu xd) to call up a menu or better yet, take you to a web page on the KDE site as is done with donation collections, here you donate a sum of money to correct specific bugs or add functions and maybe a way to request them without going through bugzilla, both the amount to be reached and the total of the collection up to that point must be shown, plus a link to github or something else that shows the work done.