[Tip] How to make Qtvkbd works on Wayland

Support
1

Hi everybody,

here is a solution to make Qtvkbd (a Virtual Keyboard for Kde plasma) works on Wayland.

Kde bugs team told me that the built-in keyboard was dropped in 5.20 in favor of external virtual keyboards. So I will help you to install Qtvkbd who is a powerfull virtual keyboard (better than the default qtvirtualkeyboard).

Let’s go.

  1. You have two choices:

First, compile the source by yourself. Go to the GitHub - Alexander-r/qtvkbd: A virtual keyboard website and read the INSTALL file.

The second, install the AUR package available here
Note: Don’t forget to install dependencies.

  1. You must edit /etc/environment file and add these lines :

QT_XCB_GL_INTEGRATION=xcb_egl
QT_WAYLAND_CLIENT_BUFFER_INTEGRATION=xcomposite-egl
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb

  1. Logout your session and then login.

  2. Launch Qtvkbd software in the menu.

Note: If you want that Qtvkbd is launched at the start of the session, add an entry in the autostart software section in the system settings. Define qtvkbd -m command line to minimize it in the systray.
On the virtual keyboard, you have two buttons, one is to close the virtual keyboard and the other is to open the numeric pad.
If you have questions, please ask me.

Regards.

2

I followed your guide and got Qtvkbd to work with Plasma Wayland under KDE neon 5.20. However, setting the variables you listed seem to break screen rotation in Plasma under Wayland. The screen rotation options under Display Configuration in System Settings is missing under Wayland when the variables are set. It returns when I remove the variables and log back in. There variables are also causing some scaling issues, most noticeablely with GTK app fonts being too small, on my hidpi display (Surface Pro 4). Is there any way to fix these issues?

Edit: I’m also getting random lockups with the variables set. Incidentally, one of the variables fixed an issue I had with the Application Dashboard being covered by my top panel.

3

@k4ever07: my solution is just a workaround to make Qtvkbd works on Plasma Wayland but it is not a good solution. Here is a discussion of the developer of Qtvkbd about the portage of it on Wayland:

As you can see the port of this program on Wayland is not on the agenda. Furthermore, the support of virtual keyboard is not well supported on Plasma Wayland. What can I suggest to you is to switch to Manjaro Gnome for tablet support on Wayland. The virtual keyboard is well supported on Gnome with Wayland. In my case, I used Kde on my hybrid pc (tablet/PC) but now I will switch to Gnome for that. Gnome is more suitable for tablets than KDE.

Regards.