Onboard

Onboard should respect GNOME's screen-keyboard-enabled gsettings value

Bug #1690582 reported by Jeremy Bícha
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Onboard
Confirmed
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

GNOME has a toggle switch for the onscreen keyboard.

How to enable the setting
=========================

Method 1
--------
From GNOME Shell, open the Settings app (gnome-control-center).
Click Universal Access.
Turn Screen Keyboard On.

Method 2
--------
Once at least one universal setting is enabled, you can click the Universal Access menu in the top right of the screen to turn Screen Keyboard On.

GNOME originally used to always show this menu, but some people complained. You can set the menu to always show up in Settings>Universal Access>Always Show Universal Access Menu

Method 3
--------
Both methods just toggle this gsettings value:
org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-keyboard-enabled

Request
=======

I would like Onboard to be a drop-in replacement for GNOME's caribou screen keyboard. For that to happen, I think Onboard should respect the Screen Keyboard setting.

Revision history for this message
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha) wrote :

Hmm, onboard ships an autostart file (like caribou) does except the Exec line is set to
Exec=onboard --not-show-in=GNOME,GNOME-Classic:GNOME --startup-delay=3.0

Is that still needed?

Revision history for this message
marmuta (marmuta) wrote :

I believe it is still needed. If you remove --not-show-in you'll get both keyboards showing at the same time. Out strategy so far was to disable Onboard in GNOME until it is explicitly requested. That request can come from installing and enabling gnome-shell-extension-onboard for example, which makes sure Onboard is launched.
There is an old bug report asking to resolve the clash between the two keyboards on Ubuntu. That behavior was one of the results.

I wish there was a simple setting that could switch between keyboards, but as far as I can tell GNOME Shell devs have made no attempt to provide one. The built-in keyboard has to be worked around with JavaScript "tricks". Our extension does that, but revives it for activities and password screens and then shows Onboard the rest of the time (something I'm hoping to change in the future).

org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-keyboard-enabled is handled by onboard-autostart.desktop too, you've probably seen it. Only --not-show-in prevents Onboard from being started.

Revision history for this message
marmuta (marmuta) wrote :

Thought about this some more. Since we can't really change onboard-autostart.desktop, we would handle "org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-keyboard-enabled" in the shell extension.

Basically, the extension would be installed and enabled at all times, but the indicator stays hidden until "screen-keyboard-enabled" is true. Onboard itself is then launched and killed by the extension as needed (or whatever else has to happen once embedding into the shell works).

Changed in onboard:
status: New → Confirmed
importance: Undecided → Medium
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.
Subscribing...

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.