Enabling on screen keyboard in GNOME Shell starts both caribou and onboard

[Michael Heyns]

Enabling on screen keyboard in ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome 3.2 installed starts both caribou and onboard simultaniously.

In Ubuntu 11.10 there is no way to specify default on screen keyboard.

[Michael Heyns (mike-bean-heyns)]

removing onboard autostart from /etc/xdg/autostart helps but is it a solution?

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Michael, thanks for you bug report.

I tried working on this a few weeks ago but had trouble getting only onboard to load in GNOME Fallback (caribou doesn't work well at all there) but only caribou to load in GNOME Shell. In Ubuntu 11.10, both GNOME Shell & GNOME Fallback share the same xdg-desktop name "Gnome" which makes this more complicated.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[LENHOF Jean-Yves (jean-yves)]

This one should be linked https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/onboard/+bug/889515

[Victor Zamanian (victorz)]

This affects me still in 12.04.

[Michael Heyns (mike-bean-heyns)]

Same here 12.04 64bit. Running gnome-shell 3.4.2.

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------------------------------

On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Victor Zamanian
<email address hidden>wrote:

> This affects me still in 12.04.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/879942
>
> Title:
> Enabling on screen keyboard starts both caribou and onboard
>
> Status in “gnome-shell” package in Ubuntu:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> Enabling on screen keyboard in ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome 3.2 installed
> starts both caribou and onboard simultaniously.
>
> In Ubuntu 11.10 there is no way to specify default on screen keyboard.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/879942/+subscriptions
>

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I'm adding onboard to this bug report. I think onboard should check for org.gnome.Shell on dbus and refuse to run since GNOME Shell has its own screen keyboard.

Yelp has some code to sniff dbus:
http://git.gnome.org/browse/yelp/tree/libyelp/yelp-settings.c#n263

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

In Ubuntu 12.04, only the caribou library is a dependency of gnome-shell not the standalone caribou so this shouldn't be a problem in GNOME Classic or Unity unless someone intentionally installs caribou.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Jeremy, do you know why GNOME Shell & GNOME Fallback share the same xdg-desktop name? Is that something that's set in stone? Those DE's are different enough, why are they lumped together under the same name? "NotShowIn=GNOME;" would probably do the job if it wasn't for this.

Did I understand you right, are you asking to lock Onboard out of GNOME Shell entirely? Me thinks a solution should tackle the auto-start problem, rather than outright ban $ALTERNATIVE-OSK. I'm open to suggestions, though.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Marmuta, I agree that GNOME Shell & Classic are very different desktops and they are becoming more different with each GNOME release as GNOME adopts new technologies that no one bothers to port to the old desktop. Those names are part of the freedesktop desktop menu spec which can be changed (MATE was added fairly recently, I don't see Cinnamon yet though): http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apb.html

Yes, updating the spec would fix this bug but I don't think that will happen in time for 12.10.

Since GNOME Shell hard-depends on caribou, it's not really practical to use an alternate screen keyboard there. Maybe the GNOME developers would consider allowing alternate screen keyboards since their built-in keyboard is very lacking.

I guess it shouldn't be a hard ban though because it's possible to run onboard without having the org.gnome.desktop.a11y.applications screen-reader-enabled key set. Maybe onboard should not automatically start if that key is set and it can detect that it's running in Shell, but manually running onboard should still work.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Ok, I don't see a way around this either now. I'll try something like: if is-auto-starting and is-gnome-shell then fail, basically a working replacement for "NotShowIn=GNOME;". Manually starting Onboard will then stay possible, no matter the system state.

What about X-GNOME-AutoRestart=true, is there a clean way to opt out of restarting at termination? I can see rate limiting in the gnome-session source, but must have missed a clear way to end restarts.

> Maybe the GNOME developers would consider allowing alternate
> screen keyboards since their built-in keyboard is very lacking.
Getting GMOME to support alternative osks may not be easy. As I understand it, the Activities view is inaccessible to portable keyboards, so only shell extensions can fully replace the built-in keyboard. It's either GNOME Shell only or the rest of the world. That's a sad state of affairs IMO, and it isn't only an obstacle for Onboard, but hurts a whole eco-system of brilliant input devices like Dasher and Cellwriter.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Fixed in trunk, I believe.
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~onboard/onboard/trunk/revision/946
X-GNOME-AutoRestart doesn't seem to be a problem.

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

A snapshot of revision 969 that contains the fix is available in our Snapshots PPA for precise and quantal as soon as they are finished building.
https://launchpad.net/~onboard/+archive/snapshots

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

I'll close this for upstream Onboard, the fix was released with Onboard 0.98.1.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package onboard - 0.98.2-0ubuntu1

---------------
onboard (0.98.2-0ubuntu1) raring; urgency=low

  * Sponsorship request for Ubuntu Raring (LP: #1071888)
  * Fix keys with operators (+,-,*,/) on the number keypad of Onboard
  * Fix failure to instantiate Config singleton with python 3.3
  * Fix distutils-extra build with python3.3
  * Sync translations files with the 0.98 branch in rosetta as of 2012-10-26
  * debian/control: demote mousetweaks from Recommends to Suggests
  * debian/rules: build for all python3 versions, by Matthias Klose
  * debian/patches: add defaults file with values appropriate for Ubuntu
 -- Francesco Fumanti <email address hidden> Fri, 26 Oct 2012 22:06:50 +0200

[Thomas (tom-rosary)]

bug still there in 12.04.2
3.5.0-36-generic
GNOME Shell 3.4.1
furthermore gnmoe-shell can't start with the onscreen keyboard

[Michael Heyns (mike-bean-heyns)]

http://obsesiftakinti.com/uidg/nsig.ixyuqtecufitmvqvukb

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. I apologize that we are not always to respond to bug reports promptly. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS reached End of Life in April. See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Please upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and re-test. If the bug is still
reproducible, increase the verbosity of the steps to recreate it so we
can try again.

Do feel free to report any other bugs you may find.