[maemo-developers] Virtual keyboards

[From: Frantisek Dufka]

Tomas Junnonen wrote:

> But I'm not sure that approach is so useful in the end. For example, the
> applications on the tablet are designed to not need modifier and
> function keys, and the VKB is designed around these assumptions.

Yes, that's a problem. Would be nice to solve it by adding those keys to 
VKB, I'm missing them a lot :-)

> When
> you use remote X applications that's no longer the case. In such use a
> full keyboard emulator like matchbox-keyboard might make more sense, and
> the effort involved could be better spent improving matchbox-keyboard
> instead.

Well, one keyboard would be better of course. If those two could be 
integrated at some level it would be great.


It seems similar to me like the (non-standard) way of maemo-desktop and 
displaying icons in taskbar in current IT200x system. I think 
hildon-desktop fixed this and you no longer need the shortcut file (?) 
like it is normal on desktop linux. VKB shoud be next step in this way 
(to run non-hildonized stuff). Let's hope this will be fixed too. If not 
Nokia then maybe Intel or people behind Ubuntu Mobile will fix it. I 
guess it is unreasonable to disallow other GUI toolkits on x86 hardware. 
People expect to run everything there. It could be tolerated on low 
performance ARM device targeted to some specific use (i.e. Internet 
Tablet :-) but not for generic linux mobile computer.

But let's go back to practical issues, can those two keyboards (gtk 
based Hildon VKB and other X API based) be somehow integrated together 
so they could 'just work' based on what window is active? Is the Hildon 
one still closed source? Where should one start - Matchbox? Or maybe 
some status bar applet doing some trickery could bring up such X based 
vkbd based on active window and hide it when the gtk one becomes active.

Frantisek