GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 467657
Show a software keyboard when no kbd is setup
Last modified: 2013-08-24 01:25:33 UTC
As per: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.gdm.general/831/focus=839 When no keyboard input is available, GDM should show a softare keyboard. We should also make sure the session, if it supports it, launches with a software keyboard (does it require a11y to be enabled?)
Note you can turn on accessibility in GDM and allow users to run on-screen-keyboard programs like GOK or onboard. So I think users with this need already have a solution. GDM could be enhanced to automatically launch the on-screen-keyboard in this situation, if someone wanted to write such code, that would be great. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 463713 ***
This is a different problem from bug 463713. Having the ability to turn on a11y is different from using an on-screen keyboard when there's no keyboard device. It probably should even be the same software, as GOK is ill-suited for non-a11y uses. Something like this: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=69696&action=view already supported by gnome-screensaver: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyAskedQuestions#head-5196776d04ed41242da63723d837fa188d57693a or GOK: http://www.gok.ca/pics/2002_05_10_152021_shot.jpg
Above you say "It probably should even be the same software, as GOK is ill-suited for non-a11y uses." Do you mean to say it "should not even be the same software"? Note that GOK supports many different command-line options to start it in different modes. You might find that GOK does support a mode that meets your needs, and perhaps we should add gestures so that GOK can be launched in ways that suit users with this need (not having a keyboard). GDM supports a BackgroundProgram configuration option if you want to always run GDM with a particular program. This could be used to start up an on-screen-keyboard program that you want. This program could also test to see if the keyboard is not enabled and only run the on-screen program if there is no keyboard if you want this behavior. Using this, you should be able to get the behavior you want...though it might be nice to add a new configuration option specifically to enable an on-screen-keyboard. Note that you can add other on-screen-keyboards to the gesture listeners so that if you want to run libfakekey or matchbox or whatever, you should be able to define key and/or mouse gestures to do so. dwellmouselisteners allow you to launch such programs using mouse gestures, so it can be launched without a keyboard. Just some suggestions about how it could be integrated today, and I'm all ears if you want to discuss how we could enhance the GDM configuration to support launching on-screen-keyboards in nicer/more fancy ways.
I added Ben Konrath to the CC list since his work on Caribou may be just what we're looking for. Note also that the new gdm and the universal access preferences button on the panel may also provide us with additional support for this. See also https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=603646
Trying to sort out a11y bugs that are still relevant from those which are not. Thoughts on this one?
This is now fixed in gnome-shell's gdm mode.