onboard loses the focus when attempting to type in Unity Dash

[Tim Edwards]

It's impossible to use Onboard onscreen keyboard to type in the Unity Dash search box unless onboard is set to 'Force Window on Top' in the Onboard preferences. Setting this shouldn't be necessary as onboard should automatically pop-up when the user selects any object that needs text entry.

How to reproduce:
1. Start onboard on a computer with a touchscreen with the onboard setting 'Force Window on Top' disabled
2. Touch the Unity 'search your computer and online sources' to open Dash
3. Touch the 'Search your computer and online sources' search field to begin typing

Result:
Dash takes the focus away from onboard, meaning it's impossible to type in the Dash search field

Expected result:
I should be able to use onboard to type in the Dash search field, without needing a physical keyboard or other workarounds

Workarounds:
In Onboard preferences set 'Force Window on Top'
Use a physical keyboard (defeats the purpose of Unity as a touch interface)

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: onboard 1.0.0-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-36.63-generic 3.13.11.6
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-36-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.4
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sun Sep 28 19:56:37 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-09-16 (11 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140416.2)
SourcePackage: onboard
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Francesco Fumanti (frafu)]

I have seen this bug in Ubuntu utopic too.

As a work around, you can enable the option "Show floating icon when Onboard is hidden" in the General tab of the Onboard Preferences window. This way, you can make Onboard reappear by clicking on the floating icon.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

@Tim, on Ubuntu 'Force Window on Top' It is enabled by default, and has been so for years. It is enabled to prevent the exact problem you describe, having Onboard show "below" Unity Dash and not being able to type.

There have been other attempted fixes, from both Unity and Onboard, but those tended to be fragile and prone to breakage with every new Ubuntu release. Hence 'Force Window on Top' it is now.

My question is, do you have a reason for keeping 'Force Window on Top' disabled? We might want to steer this bug report in a different direction then.

@Francesco, I think you mean Bug #960537. That one happens no matter the force-to-top setting and requires help from Unity for a fix.

[Tim Edwards (tkedwards)]

I don't think I changed the 'Force window on top' setting before I used onboard for the first time, but I can't be sure. Maybe there should be a warning pop-up when disabling this option? I guess if there's no other solution with the way Dash works then there's nothing to do.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Right, it was off by default at some point. If you upgraded through multiple Ubuntu releases it might have been stuck off from that time. That's a problem. It's quite possible that the other solutions were still working back then, so you didn't immediately realize it.
A warning would have to pop up on startup too and that's something we try to avoid. Also I'd rather keep references to specific desktop environments to a minimum. I think the time would be better spent updating the raise-over-dash code one more time. I'll see if I can get it working, that'll buy us some more time.

[marmuta (marmuta)]

The raise-over-dash code does appear to work, actually. I've tested Onboard from trunk and v1.0.0 from the repos on both Trusty and Vivid. It might take half a second to happen, but keyboard and floating icon usually end up on top of Dash.

I might have misunderstood. Tim, you wrote "Dash takes the focus away from onboard". Do you mean that you still see the keyboard, but touching it's keys does nothing? Or is it rather that the keyboard disappears, i.e. hides when auto-show is enabled?

[Tim Edwards (tkedwards)]

That's strange, I just tried to reproduce the problem but couldn't. The original problem was that Dash was taking the focus away from onboard, although onboard was still open and visible under Dash. But I can't reproduce this anymore - maybe a recent change in Unity has done something?

[marmuta (marmuta)]

Perhaps, it definitely was broken at some point, I remember that too. The current state seems to be that Onboard's raise code works, but Unity's doesn't have any effect, at least initially.
What's new in Vivid is, that even if the keyboard ends up below, it can be clicked anyway. The first click raises it on top of Dash.

To recap, we have
- force-to-top by default
- raise code in Onboard
- raise code in Unity (does nothing?)
- click to raise in Vivid's Unity

That should do.

> I just tried to reproduce the problem but couldn't.
Let's close this bug then. Please reopen if it starts to happen again.