Greetings!
I am having an issue with the virtual keyboard widget, which I am currently using on my tablet pc (Acer iconia w500, amd x86-64) running "classic" kde, no plasma active yet for me ).
The plasmoid is configured to show as an icon on the panel, which pops up the virtual keyboard when tapped (clicked).

Virtual keys work just fine with KDE apps; however, when I use the widget to enter text into a non-kde app (such as, entering a web address in Firefox), it seems that the virtual key gets "stuck", as if no "key released" event is sent, to the extent that several characters are entered in the text box. Disabling key repeat works, but makes things inconvenient for me to use (e.g. when I connect an external keyboard), so it's not an option.ù

Moreover, clicking on the plasmoid steals focus (albeit temporarily) from the non-kde app window; this makes reactive boxes (such as the autocompletion window for the Firefox address bar) disappear. In the end, I need to tap a key twice to have my text entered.

I did non experience the same issue with Kvkbd, but I had rather use the plasmoid which is nicer looking and more comfortable to pop up when needed.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Is there an application other than Firefox which you can reproduce this issue with?

bcooksley wrote:Is there an application other than Firefox which you can reproduce this issue with?

Hello bcooksley, thanks for answering.
I'm having this issue with any non-Kde application (or non-Qt, cannot confirm at the moment), that supports autocompletion in any fashion. I suppose it is mainly due a focus issue.
As extra information, I tried this on another computer that is a tad more responsive (read: a lot faster) than my tablet. The repeated key issue doesn't seem to appear; but the focus issue remains.
I came to the conclusion that, on a slow computer, there seems to be a delay between screen tap and (virtual) key stroke due to something happening in between. Could it be that, e.g., a redraw of the widget is forced? In this case, could it be possible to configure the virtual keyboard to only raise "key pressed" events instead of "key down"/"key up" events? (I already tried disabling desktop effects to quicken things up, no improvement).
What could be done to avoid losing focus from a non-Qt (Kde) app instead?

I've checked with the developers. Unfortunately this is a known issue with the particular implementation method used by the virtual keyboard widget - the IM interface it uses is only implemented for Qt.

This is why Plasma Active is using Maliit - unfortunately this setup is not packaged by distributions at the moment, so is relatively difficult to setup.

It does involve using code from the "plasma-active-maliit" repository on git.kde.org, which you would have to self compile and install. I suggest that you drop into #plasma on Freenode if you are interested in configuring such a setup involving Maliit on your system.

Thank you BC,
will get in touch and (possibly) try and compile plasma-active-maliit myself - if I manage without dipping too far into plasma active dependencies; else I will be fine with Kvkbd (which does not have the same issue).

Errata corrige: kvkbd does have the same issue.

I actually managed to compile maliit from source (0.94-qt4 version), however, I wasn't able to figure out how I am supposed to run it (running exampleapp-whatever doesn't pop up any keyboard).
Could you perhaps recommend a forum where I could drop a discussion, rather than an irc channel?
Thank you again!

The mailing list active@kde.org is the only forum I can think of in this case which may be able to help you unfortunately. There has not really been a use case as such which KDE has targeted on the desktop which has necessitated bringing Maliit to Plasma Desktop at this time.

The active@kde.org mailing list primarily concerns the development of Plasma Active (where the Maliit based keyboard integration for KDE/Plasma was originally developed).