Virtual keyboard doesn't work anymore and dissappeared from settings

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1

Hello,

I use Manjaro KDE on my acer p3 tablet. After the last update, maliit keyboard didn’t workanymore. So I tought I go to settings and enable it, but the virtual keyboard option dissappeared from settings also. I tought it had something to do wit this blogpost Revamping Plasma Mobile Navigation Gestures as after the plasm6 update my bottom screen border swipe effect didn’t work anymore. No it does.

Regarding the border swipe effect, when I swipe from right to left , i present the current window then I swipe it down to close that window → also doesn’t work anymore after the last update (the swiping down to clost the window doesn’t work anymore, the border swipe effect does…).

I’m on plasma 6.04 and frameworks 6.1.0
I think it is a plasma bug and not a manjaro/arch bug that’s why I ask here before I do a bug report.

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2

Did the maliit-keyboard package (or whatever it’s called on Manjaro) get uninstalled during the upgrade, maybe?

3

yes it did, I even reinstalled it together with qt6-virtualkeyboard to be sure. What concerns me is that the option to select a virtualkeyboard in the plasma settings is disappeared after the update and also I can’t swipe away open windows.

4

Hmm, it’s sounding like a distro packaging problem at this point.

5

I also don’t get virtual keyboard working when IBus Wayland is selected either.

KDE Plasma 6 on Fedora 40 via KDE spin.

6

I installed endeavouros (arch linux) on another tablet and it seems indeed a Manjaro problem because here it works as expected and as for as I know, manjaro uses the arch packages, OR, I urgently need a complete reinstall on my tablet because maybe 2 years of KDE plasma without fresh install is to long… :slightly_frowning_face:

7

maliit-keyboard still need qt5 stuffs, did you manually remove qt5-wayland?

Repository      : extra
Name            : maliit-keyboard
Version         : 2.3.1-3
Description     : Virtual keyboard based on Maliit framework
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://maliit.github.io/
Licenses        : LGPL
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : maliit-framework  hunspell  presage  qt5-multimedia  qt5-quickcontrols2  qt5-feedback  qt5-graphicaleffects
Optional Deps   : anthy: japanese language support
                  libpinyin: chinese language support
                  libchewing: chinese language support
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Download Size   : 30.24 MiB
Installed Size  : 102.30 MiB
Packager        : Antonio Rojas <arojas@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Mon 15 Apr 2024 07:28:33 AM +01
Validated By    : MD5 Sum  SHA-256 Sum  Signature
8

Right, they’re mutually exclusive, because both are input methods and you can’t have more than one input method going at once. That’s why the page in System Settings only lets you choose one.

And before you ask, yes, this is indeed a significant problem. Unfortunately it’s also challenging to fix, as the infrastructure surrounding it is complex, not well understood by moth developers, and not very flexible.

9

Seemed to me like the settings page was to choose which Virtual Keyboard to use, so I thought IBus Wayland was a virtual keyboard option.

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10

It’s unfortunately complicated and non-ideal.

The facts:

  • Maliit is an input method.
  • IBus is also an input method.
  • Only one input method can be active at once.
  • People who don’t regularly use CJK languages don’t know what “input method” means or refers to.
  • We want to offer a simple way to make the virtual keyboard active as the default input method if the distro failed to do this automatically, but without stomping all over any pre-existing input method configuration.

Those constraints gave us the current UI. It’s not ideal, but there are a lot of technical limitations that preclude improving the situation until some of them are overcome.

Unfortunately, very few developers know much about input methods either in general, or especially the way they integrate on the system. In particular the limitation that you can only have one going at once is just a killer and prevents offering a better UX in many ways.

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