[M10 tablet] Dekko can not scroll up when replying in desktop mode

[Matthias Apitz]

This problem is with the M10 Ubuntu tablet. When I have it in the so
called desktop mode and try to answer an email, the on screen keyboard
covers nearly the half of the screen high (which IMHO is to much, others do not
agree), but more problematic is, that I can't scroll the buffer of Dekko
more up to see the cursor and the text while writing, when I put it
below the last line of the message I'm replying to. See the two attached
screens.

And I do not like top posting, i.e. do not come up with this hint :-)

[Dan Chapman  (dpniel)]

Isn't this expected in "desktop mode" and using the OSK? and it would be the same for every other app and not just Dekko?

[Matthias Apitz (gubu)]

As I said, in general the OSK is to big/high and with this, yes it affects other apps too; with Dekko I do not expect this and it makes it impossible to use Dekko with OSK in desktop mode. Note too, switching the tablet to desktop mode is independently of attaching a external keyboard, it's a normal feature in the configuration. Please, switch state back, at least to Opinion;

[Will Atwood (skyflyer)]

@Dan, that is what I thought as well. But if I want to drive the tablet with just a bluetooth mouse and OSK, then it will be a problem if the OSK covers half of the open app and doesn't allow for scrolling to get cursor into view. Yes, this probably affects more than just Dekko. I don't know what the optimal solutions will be, was there a solution to this in early mock-ups?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Michael Zanetti (mzanetti)]

Adding unity8 and ubuntu-ux as it feels like we could improve the situation on a system level.

[Matthias Apitz (gubu)]

IMHO, the OSK in desktop mode must be
- configurable by the user in its size
- must be moveable on the screen like the apps to be placed in some free
  space

[Dan Chapman  (dpniel)]

Ah ok... I was wondering if Dekko was doing something different to other apps hence this bug being filed against Dekko.

I'm not really sure what I can do in Dekko to make this any better. If it's a case of resizing the window or something I think this should at least be done at the toolkit level as that's where it's handled for staged apps, or as Michael suggests possibly at the system level.

Asking all app developers to handle this use case themselves isn't going to scale well and there will no doubt be inconsistencies with how each is handled (if handled at all). It will be better to come up with one solution that can be applied to all apps.

[lgd (lgd)]

Same problem in landscape mode on smartphone BQ E4.5! Very bad to type long emails! Really a serious problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Matthias Apitz (gubu)]

Dan, if you in Dekko in reply mode the right part of Dekko is a window with some big bar of the form

----------------------------------------------
v New message /
----------------------------------------------

when you are in non-desktop mode, one can scroll the text completely up,
it hides behibd the above bar; when you are in desktop mode, even in full screen,
it is impossible to move the text above enough to see the cursor; please make
your own impression of the difference; i.e. this must be some special probleme
within Dekko;

[Selene ToyKeeper (toykeeper)]

On many other systems, this issue was solved by making the OSK appear in a regular window instead of an overlay, and then tiling the window layout. So, it was guaranteed not to overlap anything, and apps didn't have to do anything special to handle scrolling when the keyboard was visible, because the window manager resized the windows automatically. Simple and effective.

On a non-tiling window manager this would be more difficult, like unity8 in desktop mode. But I've seen this solved in non-tiling window managers too, by giving some windows an "avoid" property to prevent overlap with other windows. If the keyboard goes along an entire edge of the screen, the WM can mostly pretend the screen is temporarily smaller, which is pretty simple. But that doesn't allow making the keyboard narrower than the screen, so it might be a better idea to do a more complex version of the "avoid" concept.

Regardless, it's tricky to do partial tiling in a non-tiling window manager.

[Matthias Apitz (gubu)]

Selene, could you please attach some screen or pseydo ASCII grafic to understand how the OSK should appear; thanks

[Will Atwood (skyflyer)]

Looks like Penk has done some work in this area already. If you look into his Terrarium project he appears to have a solution to the OSK and other windows. (https://launchpad.net/~penk)

Take a look at the picture of his Terrarium project.
http://penkia.net/portfolio
Pretty amazing stuff!