[OSK] Should remember keyboard layout per conversation

[Michał Sawicz]

Steps:
* go to a conversation
* select a non-default keyboard layout
* go to a different conversation
* select a different keyboard layout
* go back to the first conversation

Expected:
* the selected layout should be restored for each conversation

Current:
* layout is "global" for the whole session

Thinking about the solution... it'd probably be best if text fields had a "context" property that the input method could read and restore layouts per context. If a field had no context, it would fall back to the generic behaviour - per-c

Rationale: you generally change layouts per contact, to write to someone in a different language.

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This would require deeper functionality between the OSK and SDK / messaging app than we currently have - the proposal sounds good but not much to add from UX POV at this stage

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In par with UX, moved to Wishlist for UITK.

[Giorgio Venturi (giorgio-venturi-deactivatedaccount)]

I think this is very interesting, I have this issue on other platforms as I often switch languages & need different OSK. I would have it in settings so user can choose whether it's a global or conversation-specific setting

[Michael Sheldon (michael-sheldon)]

To implement this we'd need to devise some mechanism to provide language hints to the keyboard. If we wanted to do this purely internally this could be achieved by exposing some hint via the keyboard's QML bindings which the SDK's text field/area could use to inform the keyboard of the change in language when focused. Alternatively we could suggest this upstream as a property on the Qt TextInput type and provide the information via the QtInputContextPlugin interface like is already done for the inputMethodHints property.

I'd guess that's a decision that really needs to be arrived at by the SDK team, but we should be able to support either approach from the keyboard side. The first option would likely be less work, but this seems like the sort of thing that should perhaps be standardised across Qt apps if upstream are interested in this functionality.

[Zsombor Egri (zsombi)]

I don;t think the OSK layout should really be set by the text input itself. Would you really use different language per each text input in the same application? I don't think it would make sense. The user won't necessarily use different OSK layout in the same app, it's rather app specific than text input component specific.

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

W dniu 21.08.2015 o 11:06, Zsombor Egri pisze:
> I don;t think the OSK layout should really be set by the text input
> itself. Would you really use different language per each text input in
> the same application? I don't think it would make sense. The user won't
> necessarily use different OSK layout in the same app, it's rather app
> specific than text input component specific.

See the usecase - conversations in different languages within the same
messaging app - be it SMS, Telegram or else.

Changing the layout also changes the dictionary for completion and
correction, trying to write in a language other than the dictionary is
going to result in a mess.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Cris Dywan (kalikiana)]

For what it's worth the Android phone I have does handle this differently: there's an "international" keyboard that uses multiple selected languages at once without manual switching. And it guesses candidates based on previous words so for example "Will" can be completed with "you" and "ich" with German and English dictionaries even if the first word is ambiguous.