So the OSK theme landed a few OTAs back. Awesome right?!
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

• 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

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

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

Some progress for the themes support hurray!

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

Is it just the video of the drawer's height decreases while closing?

Anyway, I have to be honest, I'm questioning their dedication to get UT on it.
In my opinion, they should get the devices to developers as soon as possible as it is important as well.
There's only a few planned OS out there, they don't need to send 100 phones
It feels like they only care about PureOS.

Okay enough of conspiracies and negativity
I'm still happy that there's progress and UT will sure be available on the platform.
It's still too expensive for my wallet though

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

@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

PinePhone will be my next daily driver!

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

Hi, I'm Kugi Eusebio from the Philippines. Around late 20's
I'm a software engineer but only for a packaged application so nothing exciting
I've been using UT since 2014. My first UT device was a Nexus 7 2013 which I bought primarily to just install UT on it.
I was part of the Ubuntu Pioneers who are the very first ones to publish apps in the then Canonical's app store.
I bought a BQ E5 HD on 2015 which I used as my main phone until now. I also bought a 2nd hand Nexus 5 which I now use for my UT developments.

I've bought a lot of stuffs because of UT......folding keyboards, bluetooth mouse, portable monitor, slimport adapters, OTG hubs, etc. So it's safe to say that I've invested time and money on UT

I currently have 4 apps in the OpenStore and I've been more active in the OS development recently with one-liner bug fixes and the recent OSK theming support.

Just saw this thread LOL

Is swype really faster and accurate? It is dependent on the language right?
Sometimes I try it but I don't see it being accurate and fast to my taste.

I think someone should file a bug as this is definitely a regression and it only happens on certain devices.
It seems to affect the terminal and file manager.

@Lakotaubp The swipe thing I did is a totally different thing
It's for moving the text cursor and selecting texts.

I think "swipe" would be difficult to implement in UT especially that some swipe gestures are already used by the maliit keyboard. Maybe a totally different keyboard would do.

UT is not designed to do such things. Its root is limited to 2GB (due to cache size limitation I think) and mounted as read-only. I'm pretty sure you're wondering because this a linux OS after all. However, UT is quite different from the other linux OS, at least for now.
The official way of installing stuffs is using Libertine which is a container.

If you still want to use the root, there are ways of resizing the root and mount it as RW. Ironically, I'm one of those users that did this extensively on my Nexus 5
You can search here in this forum for the instructions . I believe there are a couple of such post.

@domubpkm Ah I see. I guess that's the case. I've only tested on the youtbe app I think. I wonder how it will take effect on those that simply uses WebEngineView from Morph.Web.

Awesome work but seems to be not implemented on webapps.

I think the redesigned (unimplemented) scopes looked good but sadly, scopes doesn't work good.
Personally, I like the app drawer. It's only the start and we'll surely see improvements and new stuffs moving forward

@dreamwebspace I did it 5 years ago so I can't remember exactly but I think a good start is to know how android stores SMS or check if there are SMS exporting apps in Android to known formats which can be easily transferred to an sqlite database.

@AppLee Wow that's cool. It was delivered to your door?
I got my tracking number but it's stuck to the same status for almost a week.

I'm not sure if there's an automatic way but SMS is in an sqlite file in ~/.local/share/history-service.
I was able to migrate mine from Blackberry to UT bu manually