[feature request] Direct keypress support and permanently on focus for virtual keyboard
asked 2014-12-18 21:50:08 +0300
Firstly a bit of background: what I am truly lacking in Jolla is a good SSH client. (The main thing that kept me from switching Jolla to be my main phone was this: SSH client is my most important and most used app on Android phone!) The developer mode Terminal app can use ssh, but the terminal emulation features are severely lacking and the custom keyboard there is not nice to use (especially keys at edge of screen usually don't work as Sailfish thinks it is attempt to do swipe from edge gesture) and keeps the screen jumping up and down. I do have some nice SSH clients on Android (e.g. ConnectBot), but the problem is again keyboard.
As it seems like support for Android keyboards is deemed not relevant (https://together.jolla.com/question/10651/android-keyboards/), I would like to request the keyboard Sailfish OS comes with be a bit more compatible with this use case. Primarily two features are needed:
- Send keypresses directly to the app instead of waiting for word to be completed and then sending the full word at once
- Keep virtual keyboard up even when focus is not on a text input field
These two would be linked together; it only makes sense to keep the keyboard up for the purpose of sending key presses directly to app, and if a text input is on, then suggestions should be provided and the usual input method works fine.
So in essence, I am requesting a way to ask the virtual keyboard to be available even when no text input field is selected, and when this is true, then keypresses should be delivered directly to the app instead of going through the suggestions engine.
Cursor keys would also be nice, but there seems to be a way to work around that (https://together.jolla.com/question/21510/howto-adapt-sailfish-virtual-keyboard-vkb-layout/#23160)
I also know of the possibility of removing XT9 to disable suggestions. I have not tried whether or not this actually turns the virtual keyboard into sending keys directly to the apps, but in any case it would remove the suggestions that would be useful in other apps, and is therefore not a good solution.