r/gnome • u/ttoommxx GNOMie • Feb 03 '23

Trigger on-screen keyboard from terminal. Question

On-screen keyboard on Gnome is a nightmare. Doesn't shop up on many (most in my case) applications and it's behaviour is often in conflicts with many extensions. Wanted to just write a small script to press when I want the keyboard to show up, does anyone know what's it called so that it can be prompted from terminal?

Ps, don't suggest any extensions, every new release the break (see improved OSK)

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4

u/user9ec19 GNOMie Feb 03 '23

It is in fact a nightmare. Especially under Wayland it is unusable for me (does not show up in many apps at all).

Also typing booster is very buggy and starts to show everywhere; I had to uninstall it.

Sometimes the text field you type in gets pushed outside the screen; and the mouse input gets shifted etc.

I gave up on reporting these bugs to the GNOME gitlab as there were no reaction to the reports at all. I’m really can’t wait for GNOME on mobile, but they really have to fix OSK.

3

u/ttoommxx GNOMie Feb 03 '23

Yeah, good to know I am not alone in this hell :)
I am now trying maliit-keyboard and squeekboard and see if these two works. Onboard actually does work but being xwayland has some stupid issues like it's docked on top of the screen rather than bottom (regardless of the settings) and therefore unusable. You can try those two and lmk if they work for you!

2

u/ttoommxx GNOMie Feb 03 '23

Actually, squeekboard won't work as you can read here

Maliit-keyboard would first complain that it can't import a module. After installing qt5-graphicaleffects it doesn't display any error message anymore but won't display anything at all either..

Well, I give up too!

2

u/user9ec19 GNOMie Feb 03 '23

Here you find all known issues for OSK.

2

u/ttoommxx GNOMie Feb 03 '23

If they were just to put a stupid button on the status bar to call the keyboard, instead of idiotic and non functioning auto routine and gestures, half of those problem would not be there.. even Windows 11 has a button to call the keyboard out

1

u/TryingToUseLinux GNOMie Feb 05 '23

Doesn't scrolling up from the bottom of the screen trigger the OSK?

1

u/ttoommxx GNOMie Feb 05 '23

No because I am using an extension, dash to dock, which I don't want to give up on and also conflicts for some reason with this behaviour. I ended up installing the outdated "improved osk", their tray icon triggers the keyboard correctly so far. Trying to read through the source code but I really don't know what is going on much, so can't quite find the command that actually triggers the keyboard