How to popup screen keyboard (Ubuntu)

[seps]

Hi, I would like to use the Ubuntu screen keyboard (note, not the QVirtualKeyboard) whenever a user clicks on a Input (QTextInput etc..).

I enable the screen keyboard under Ubuntu settings, and the keyboard pops up when i click any application text input (e.g. browser, explorer).

However, when I click any Qt input widgets, the keyboard does not show.

I've searched the web but couldn't find a solution to popup the keyboard consistently.

Any tip?

Thanks

[Kent-Dorfman]

google search for "qt activate screen keyboard" yields results.

What did you search for?

[JonB]

@Kent-Dorfman
To be fair I searched for similar yesterday, and looked at that search now, and all I could find is about the Qt virtual keyboard, which the OP does not want.

[seps]

@Kent-Dorfman very helpful, thanks.

Anyway, it seems that Qt doesn't work in general with Ubuntu 'screen keyboard'

I've tried and installed qt applications from apt, and in these qt applications the Ubuntu 'screen keyboard' doesn't pop up, as opposed to 'native' GTK3 applications.

[JoeCFD]

@seps typed: use onboard for input in qt linedit on ubuntu in ChatGPT
got this

#include <QApplication>
#include <QHBoxLayout>
#include <QLabel>
#include <QLineEdit>
#include <QProcess>
#include <QX11EmbedContainer>
#include <QX11EmbedWidget>
#include <QWidget>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication app(argc, argv);

    // Create a widget with a layout
    QWidget widget;
    QHBoxLayout *layout = new QHBoxLayout(&widget);

    // Create a line edit and add it to the layout
    QLineEdit *lineEdit = new QLineEdit(&widget);
    layout->addWidget(lineEdit);

    // Create a label with a button to activate the keyboard
    QLabel *label = new QLabel("Click here to activate the on-screen keyboard", &widget);
    QPushButton *button = new QPushButton("Activate", &widget);
    QHBoxLayout *labelLayout = new QHBoxLayout(label);
    labelLayout->addWidget(button);
    labelLayout->addStretch();
    layout->addWidget(label);

    // Create a X11 embed container and widget
    QX11EmbedContainer *container = new QX11EmbedContainer(&widget);
    QX11EmbedWidget *embedWidget = new QX11EmbedWidget(container);
    container->embedClientWindow(embedWidget->winId());

    // Connect the button's clicked signal to a lambda function
    QObject::connect(button, &QPushButton::clicked, [=]() {
        // Start the onboard process
        QProcess::startDetached("onboard");

        // Embed the onboard window into the X11 embed widget
        embedWidget->embedClient("Onboard");

        // Set the focus to the line edit
        lineEdit->setFocus();
    });

    // Add the X11 embed container to the layout
    layout->addWidget(container);

    // Show the widget
    widget.show();

    return app.exec();
}

[JonB]

@JoeCFD
But how did you know to use the word onboard to ask for this? It appears to be the key, I haven't heard of it?! :)

[JoeCFD]

@JonB A few queries will get there. I did use it before long time ago and therefore the name looks familiar.

[seps]

@JoeCFD thanks for the help, but I already tried the chatgpt route before posting here. Posting here was my last try

onboard is not the standard Ubuntu screen keyboard. If I go in the 'onboard' route, I could as well write/ use my custom keyboard widget, that I would have more control over

Put simply, qt as a whole doesn't seem to support standard Ubuntu screen keyboard (GTK does)

[rYhcpcprDk]

@seps, did you find a solution?