How to make a QInputDialog trigger the virtual keyboard to show up?

Question

I am developing a Qt application with Python and PySide. The application runs on Ubuntu Linux; the machine has a touch screen.

The virtual keyboard 'onboard' is used to let the user enter text. By default it is hidden. Once a text field in an application like gedit gets the focus it automatically triggers the virtual keyboard and it shows up.

However, in my application I have a QInputDialog that ask the user for some input. In my case, focusing the text field of the QInputDialog does not trigger the virtual keyboard to show up. How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

As per the README onboard exposes a DBUS service to allow applications to toggle's its visibility.

You probably want to do this by adding something like before and after the getText call. E.g.

msg = QtDBus.QDBusMessage.createMethodCall('org.onboard.Onboard', '/org/onboard/Onboard/Keyboard','org.onboard.Onboard.Keyboard'
                'org.onboard.Onboard.Keyboard.Show')
QtDBus.QDBusConnection.sessionBus().send(msg)
text, ok = QtGui.QInputDialog.getText(self, 'Input Dialog', 
            'Enter your name:')
msg2 = QtDBus.QDBusMessage.createMethodCall('org.onboard.Onboard', '/org/onboard/Onboard/Keyboard','org.onboard.Onboard.Keyboard'
                'org.onboard.Onboard.Keyboard.Hide')
QtDBus.QDBusConnection.sessionBus().send(msg2)

You could also use the ToggleVisible method for both calls.

This is specific to onboard, for the general showing up of any virtual keyboard solution is either integrated into QT already using the existing ibus or malitt input method engines or is done by implementing a QPlatformInputContext as demonstrated here and here or by using similar method either using DBUS or some other message passing solution (TCP sockets,etc) in order to toggle the status for that particular virtual keyboard.