So the OSK theme landed a few OTAs back. Awesome right?! :D
And now I'm back with my OSK works....finally!....specifically with the advanced text functionalities in the OSK.
I've prototyped and demoed this almost half a year ago but now I want to make it "PR-ready".
So once I get satisfied, I will propose this officially.

List of changes and additional features

• Added audio and haptic feedback to the word ribbon (auto suggest bar)
• Temporary fix for the issue where cursor mover isn't working correctly in QtWebEngine text fields such as in the Morph Browser (some trade-offs to fix this temporarily)
• Horizontal movement in the cursor mover will now move vertically once the start/end of line is reached. I'm not sure how this really affects the experience but it was definitely implemented like that before for a reason. (a trade-off for the issue above)
• A new way to trigger the cursor mover mode (bottom swipe). This is available anywhere in the OSK so regardless of the layout or type, you can now trigger it. Press and hold in the space bar is still available.
• Implemented text manipulation features which are available in a top bar that shows up when in cursor mover mode.
  • Copy
  • Cut
  • Paste
  • Select All
  • Undo
  • Redo
• Implemented text selection mode (no timeout, needs manually exiting)
  • While in cursor mover mode, double tap/click to enter selection mode. You can also immediately select texts by double tapping then swiping immediately without lifting your finger.
  • Word Selection: Double tap while in cursor mover mode without swiping [Disabled for now to fix QtWebEngine issue]
• Added floating buttons in cursor mover mode
  • Move cursor to the start/end of line or document
  • They can also be used in conjunction with the selection mode!
  • Done button: Used to end selection mode and/or cursor mover mode
• Changed timeout of cursor mover mode to 5 seconds (experimental)

Know Issues:

• The new toolbar buttons and floating buttons sometimes retain their previous color when changing OSK theme.
  FIXED: Just needed to bind the colors :)

• Using the Start of line/document button from the floating buttons while in selection mode doesn't select texts. I'm not really sure why.
  FIXED: Stupid mistake by me....it worked in my first branch and just had a mistake with this new branch :D

• The bottom swipe trigger might be difficult to trigger in landscape mode especially for devices with protrusion on the sides/bezels especially those with cases.

Please feel free to try it out from the git branch linked below. You'd need to use crossbuilder to compile it and deploy to your device via ADB.
https://github.com/kugiigi/keyboard-component/tree/xenial_-_textfunctions

NOTE: BEWARE EDGE CHANNEL USERS. This won't work on edge because there's a separate branch for it which I don't have a modified fork yet. If there's plenty of interested then I might consider :P

Suggestions and feedback will also be greatly appreciated especially on the design :D

Hello Everyone,

I'm starting this thread because I wanted to share my ideas about improving the OSK in UT.
Back in the Canonical days, I suggested to use the space key for controlling the text cursor.
It was a real joy when I learned that Canonical did implemented it which we can now enjoy with UBports.
And I want continue with that idea and improve or extend its functionality.

At the moment, I have two prototypes.

1. [Swipe to trigger cursor mover]
   Instead of the current "Press and Hold" gesture to trigger the cursor mover, I made it to work with just a horizontal swipe in the space key. For me, this gesture is more natural while typing unlike the current one which will some kind of disrupt your flow by long pressing before swiping. There's a catch though because there's more chance of accidental trigger especially for those who tend to drag fingers while typing. My experience so far is good though and did an accidental trigger just once.
   Demo Video

2. [Swipe to switch OSK language]
   This one adds a functionality to change OSK language via swipe in the space key. Some people needs multiple OSK layout/language enabled and it could be a bit hassle to switch between them especially if you have more than 2...remember emoji? yeah that counts :) I personally don't have this problem so I can''t attest if this one would be really helpful. And also, at the moment, emoji kinda breaks it because it has a very different layout which doesn't have the space key. I'm also planning to propose a new layout for emoji :)
   Demo Video

Now I don't have a concrete plan yet on how I will propose these. I'm thinking of adding a Gesture section in the settings app so users can customize the gestures and which functionality they want for them. For example, you can set "PressAndHold" for Cursor Mover then "Horizontal Swipe" for Language switch. But that could be too much settings? can't say yet.

EXPAND IT FURTHER!
Currently, I have another idea to expand this idea further and I'm trying to do a quick hack for it.
The idea is to also use the "cursor mover" feature for text selections/manipulations. My initial thought is to use double click/tap (without releasing) to start the text selection. I would also like to put Copy, paste, select all buttons above the OSK. I want to see and use it first in action before thinking of the best way to implement these gestures. Unfortunately, I can't even do the first step yet which is to enable text selection from the OSK and it seems like I have to modify the C++ part of maliit and recompile which I am not familiar enough.

Any thoughts, opinion, violent reaction, help maybe?

FUN FACT: When I got the idea of the "Space key cursor mover", it was a "Eureka" moment for me and I thought I was the first one in the world to come up with that idea. Then days after that, I saw the exact same functionality on my friend's LG G3. At least it was my original idea and it just happened someone got it first LOL

Some screenshots :)

Cursor mover mode

Selection Mode

I won't mention anyone specifically but I'm very thankful to this whole community! :)
It's been great to be a part of this :D

@Lakotaubp There will indeed be a huge wave of new users once PinePhone is generally released.
But I think many of those people expects a traditional linux OS and many will complain about UBports being "limited" and might go to other OS.
But in any case, this will be big for UT and I'm pretty we'll still get legit happy new users :)

And I'm about to be brave with a heart and buy a PinePhone :D

PinePhone will be my next daily driver! :heart_eyes:

Anyway, I wonder if it's running the latest codes from the edge channel. I see the system indicator still having the user list.

@PINE64 That sounds really promising. I might get one just to do some mobile OS-hopping :D

I'm honestly not satisfied yet. The behavior of horizontal swipes might be erratic with one hand.
And I really want to add a better trigger than just the current "press and hold" the space bar.
Hopefully, I can work on it very soon so it'll be included in OTA-11. :)

Enjoy everyone! and don't be hesitant to nitpick so we can improve ;)

Here's a quick overview of my experiments with bottom gestures in the OSK.
I'm still undecided with the horizontal bar at the bottom to be honest :D
Everything's experimental here..take note :)
What do you think?

https://youtu.be/Qh_CkiM4nyQ

Some progress for the themes support hurray! :D

Here are the repositories I've uploaded which so far works quite well except the settings-app which I was not able to build myself but I've only changed QML and those worked fine when I tested directly on my phone :)
Keyboard component
Settings app

My initial plan was just create a dark mode for the OSK but since the foundation for the colors is already there so I experimented with different themes and these are the ones I've come up.
(I don't know how to shrink the photos here :P)

Ambiance (Default)

Suru Dark

Suru Black

Just White

Just Black

Just Grey

Bordered White

Bordered Black

Bordered Grey

Colored ones are also possible but I did not include any in the repo but here's a sample

I don't know if this will be accepted but if yes, @CiberSheep I would like get the opinion of the design team and you can check the colors.
They're just in json files in the repo and can be easily modified ;)

And BTW, this completely removed the border images and replaced with rectangles with borders

This hasn't been implemented reliably in windowed mode. There are apps that adjusts when the OSK is displayed but they won't work well in windowed mode. I suggest your turn down the opacity of the keyboard in the settings although this is still not perfect but at least you can see behind it.

Perhaps you can check how UTTT does the switching to windowed mode and if it's just a script, you can add something in upstart which can be triggered every boot. Scaling for example can be done this way, actually it's what UTTT does to be persistent.

@PhoenixLandPirat I understand. Edge gestures experience can vary depending on the physical form factor of the device. Bottom edge gestures can be harder to trigger when on landscape for example. The see that OP3 has a button at the bottom so that could affect the gesture 😅

@pixelated I guess you need to get used to it. Perhaps you're not using bottom edge gestures much? Try starting the swipe further below the screen 😉

Anyway, thanks for your feedback. This is off-topic in this thread 😂

@Keneda I'm not int he business so I can't really say how simple it is but they already mentioned the reasons here and I believe them so in my understanding, it's not simple.

@PINE64 Yes, that's actually what I'm going to say. if it only has 1GB of RAM then the demo video becomes much more impressive. I did not see serious slow downs and not even crashes on it. I would expect something like that would have happened on a bq E5 which also has 1 GB of RAM 😅

UT is one of the most usable OS on the pinephone right now because it's mainly a mobile OS unlike others that still has some UIs that doesn't work well on small screens. In return, it also has the least desktop apps support and to me it's not a big deal at the moment since most desktop apps aren't really usable on small screens anyway. As mentioned, Libertine is the official way of installing desktop apps via apt. Expect worse experience than on other OSes. Perhaps once we move from xmir ro xwayland it'll be better.

@Eric The bar in the terminal app isn't part of the keyboard. It is part of the app which actually already has most of the important keys/combo keys you need in the terminal. You can press and hold and the left-most button in the bar to select different set of keys. Scr has the arrow keys.

Although, there are faster and simpler ways to use the arrow keys. You can swipe with one-finger inside the terminal app to imitate the arrow keys. You can also tap to imitate the tab key. Another way is as mentioned by the others, either press and hold the space bar or swipe from the bottom of the OSK if you're already in OTA-12.

@PhoenixLandPirat Yes, it was not removed. May I know why it's not easy to swipe from the bottom on OP3? Because to me, swiping from the bottom is a lot easier and faster to use the feature...of course I'm bias because I made it LOL

Yeah, I think it's unfair to expect Pine64 to provide wide variation/configuration on their products. They're not big of a company and actually donates some of their profits to other projects. Anyway, to me keyboard layout is not a big deal because I'm used to use English layout anyway :D But hey, I'm using a German layout keyboard right now, my work laptop, and I'm using it fine in English mode 😅

@PINE64 May I know which unit version did Marius use in the demo video? Is it the dev version with 1GB of RAM?

I haven't really looked into this functionality in the keyboard. But I am thinking that if ever someone implements this, it can be separate language layout like Emoji. Something like "Terminal Keyboard".