Bug #14753: Long-press delay for typing special chars with the on-screen keyboard is too long

Bug #14753

Long-press delay for typing special chars with the on-screen keyboard is too long

Added by intrigeri 2017-09-30 07:38:24 . Updated 2019-01-05 14:25:42 .

Status:

Resolved

Priority:

Normal

Assignee:

Category:

Accessibility

Target version:

Tails_4.0

Start date:

2017-09-30

Due date:

% Done:

100%

Feature Branch:

Type of work:

Wait

Blueprint:

Starter:

Affected tool:

On-screen keyboard

Deliverable for:

Description

Initially reported on Feature #10263#note-10.

The GNOME on-screen keyboard allows e.g. long-pressing uao -> menu where the umlaut version can be inserted.

One of us tried this long-press thing after being suggested this by an Android user, and initially thought it did not work because he expected a shorter delay.

Let’s see if we can easily fix that or if we need to document it somehow.

Subtasks

Related issues

Blocks Tails - ~~Feature #16080~~: Core work 2018Q4 → 2019Q2: User experience

Resolved

2018-10-29

History

#1 Updated by intrigeri 2017-09-30 09:43:14

Indeed, there’s a hardcoded 1s delay since that Vala code was introduced.

Reported upstream: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=788369

#2 Updated by intrigeri 2017-09-30 09:44:47

Status changed from Confirmed to In Progress
Target version changed from Tails_3.3 to Tails_3.5
% Done changed from 0 to 10
Type of work changed from Research to Communicate

If nothing happens on the upstream bug during this cycle, I’ll point the GNOME design team to it.

#3 Updated by intrigeri 2017-11-18 11:48:14

Assignee changed from intrigeri to sajolida
QA Check set to Info Needed

intrigeri wrote:
> If nothing happens on the upstream bug during this cycle, I’ll point the GNOME design team to it.

Done. sajolida, do you think it’s worth documenting the long-press feature (possibly upstream if it’s not documented in GNOME help)?

#4 Updated by anonym 2018-01-23 19:52:52

Target version changed from Tails_3.5 to Tails_3.6

#5 Updated by sajolida 2018-02-16 19:25:28

Assignee changed from sajolida to intrigeri

The upstream source code is there:

https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-user-docs/tree/gnome-help/C/keyboard-osk.page

I tried to type “ê” with the screen keyboard and did:

Long-click on “e”.
After 1 second a popup appears with serval variants of “e”.
Release the long-click.
Move to “ê”.
Click on “ê”.

But nothing happens.

To me it seems like, on top of being slower than I would expect, this feature is actually broken.

Can you make it work?

#6 Updated by intrigeri 2018-02-17 08:09:48

Assignee changed from intrigeri to sajolida
QA Check deleted (~~Info Needed~~)
Type of work changed from Communicate to End-user documentation

sajolida wrote:
> To me it seems like, on top of being slower than I would expect, this feature is actually broken.

Yes, it’s broken when trying to type a character that’s not in the currently active keyboard layout (I’m talking about the physical keyboard layout, not the on-screen keyboard’s one). It’s obviously wrong to let the user try something that won’t work but AFAIK nobody reported this since we’ve switched to GNOME on-screen keyboard, so I’m inclined to believe that users who could be affected by this problem are not affected in practice, because they choose in the Greeter a keyboard layout that has all the chars they want to type.

But it works fine for me when the active keyboard layout has the special character one clicks in the on-screen keyboard.

#7 Updated by sajolida 2018-02-19 19:09:55

Target version changed from Tails_3.6 to Tails_3.7

I did more tests to understand your last comment:

If I have a French keyboard configured. I’m able to type “û” with the screen keyboard.
If I have a Spanish keyboard configured. I’m unable to type “û” with the screen keyboard.

That’s a silly bug :)

Anyway… I’ll try to document the long press upstream, but not in time for 3.6.