Re: How to get KDE virtual keyboard on Debian

[Yvan Masson]

Le 28/03/2023 à 11:40, Yvan Masson a écrit :

Le 28/03/2023 à 03:39, Duncan a écrit :

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

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:


on the desktop as they intend to add the functionality there, but haven't

if this is the case, it could remain so until 6. (Regarding 6, gentoo/kde

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.)


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)?


thread with interest as well.

only the same single plausible package you tried, qtvirtualkeyboard, so no 1) Maybe it's a stub that for now only works on plasma-mobile, stubbed out yet.  With frameworks 5 feature-frozen as they prepare frameworks/plasma6, dev comments suggest it's not expected until late year.  And of course the 2) (Less likely?) Perhaps the virtual keyboard doesn't show up if there's a Whatever the case, I'm curious on the resolution, so I'll be following this

So I have asked on discuss.kde.org and Nate Graham gave me an answer. Disclaimer: you were right :-).

https://discuss.kde.org/t/how-to-enable-virtual-keyboard-included-in-kde/264/2

Even if you do not give an answer, thanks for you detailed answer Duncan: your 3 possibilities are interesting.

As a temporary workaround, and as suggested by someone on debian-u...@lists.debian.org, I would use xvkbd under X11 for what I was trying to do: using OpenBoard (so X11 is required) on KDE with interactive video projector.

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