Virtual Keyboard misses touched keys in Desktop Mode

[SHADOW-XIII]

When typing on Steam's Virtual Keyboard in desktop mode with touchscreen it sometimes does not register the keys, have to press it second (and sometimes even third) time to get the key register and typed into a field

VERY annoying.

Works fine when typing on virtual keyboard using dpad and abxy buttons but not the touchscreen

[Tyknu]

I have this same issue on SteamOS mode, not just desktop mode. Really disappointed. I haven’t found a fix yet.

[Preath]

Happens for me too. It misses inputs and to make it input you have to tap twice or hold down the key. This is horrible and unreliable.

[kakarron]

mine gives the vibration feedback when I press the keys even when it misses it

[TheBrad]

Same here from day 1 on. Very annoying. Does anyone know, if re-installing the virtual keyboard may help and if so, how to do this?

[Neikius]

Could it be this: First touch - it moves the mouse cursor. Next touch it clicks? Alas this the pain of mouse emulation on touch screen I think. Correct me if I am wrong. But I would really like to have a fix for this, would solve so much.

[Marlock]

Originally posted by Neikius:

Could it be this: First touch - it moves the mouse cursor. Next touch it clicks? Alas this the pain of mouse emulation on touch screen I think. Correct me if I am wrong. But I would really like to have a fix for this, would solve so much.

generally not the case... touchscreens register the cursor position and the click event together... what you say would cause a very predictable case of always needing to doubletap to type

IMHO it's more likely a consequence of Valve using an embeded browser, javascript, html in their new keyboard like in their entire new UI... and javascript being a lousy language for reliably detecting and reacting to user input

you know when web pages skips even normal mouse and keyboard inputs occasionally in a normal desktop browser (on both windows and linux)? that...

IIRC their old onscreen keyboard (only in desktop mode) was horrible in several ways but was built differently and didn't have this particular issue (like normal linux onscreen keyboards don't either)

in any case, keep asking them to fix it and at some point their devs will do something about it, either by tweaking the current one to be more reliable or by eventually replacing it with a different solution that's inherently more reliable

[hobosaurous]

I too am getting this, really annoying when you get the haptic feedback which is there to let you know something has happened but then nothing does. The only think so far I have found that lets the system down

[DragonFax]

25% of the keys I'm hitting are not being registered. Its awful. Worst... it make sthe sound and gives haptic feedback, giving the impression it worked.

Makes it practially imposisble to type a password, let alone anything really.

[Marlock]

on another thread someone suggested installing Core Keyboard from the Discover Store and using that in desktop mode instead of the default inscreen keyboard provided by Valve...

ps: the issue they describe there happens only in desktop mode, not in gaming mode... is it the same here for everyone?

[Rodolfo Hermans]

Same problem here, only in desktop mode. The keyboard makes the haptic feedback, so the key is recognized but the character doesn't appear. Also the keyboard is very incomplete, The arrow keys don't work well in a terminal, and there is no up/down.

[Bee🐝]

I'll add my two cents.

Same issue in Desktop mode and it's a nightmare when typing anything.

[deaddoof]

Originally posted by Marlock:

Originally posted by Neikius:

Could it be this: First touch - it moves the mouse cursor. Next touch it clicks? Alas this the pain of mouse emulation on touch screen I think. Correct me if I am wrong. But I would really like to have a fix for this, would solve so much.

generally not the case... touchscreens register the cursor position and the click event together... what you say would cause a very predictable case of always needing to doubletap to type

IMHO it's more likely a consequence of Valve using an embeded browser, javascript, html in their new keyboard like in their entire new UI... and javascript being a lousy language for reliably detecting and reacting to user input

Not correct either... Javascript is a language which uses the same API as other languages....

Originally posted by Neikius:

Could it be this: First touch - it moves the mouse cursor. Next touch it clicks? Alas this the pain of mouse emulation on touch screen I think. Correct me if I am wrong. But I would really like to have a fix for this, would solve so much.

Yea, you describe what is going on. Touch input is pretty new on Linux and the ecosystem needs times to adjust and support it natively. Valve will probably move the desktop to wayland one day but it will take time. Game mode uses wayland.

https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2017/02/how-input-works-touch-input/

Touch input is the new kid in the block concerning input events. It’s a technology which was created after X11 got created and thus it is not part of the X11 core protocol. On X11 this makes touch a weird beast. E.g. there is always an emulation to a pointer event. Applications which do not support touch can still be used as the touch events generate pointer events. Now this is actually a huge sacrifice for the API and means that touch feels – at least to me – as a second class citizen in X11.

[Marlock]

Originally posted by deaddoof:

Not correct either... Javascript is a language which uses the same API as other languages....

sure, but can't the issue be in the javascript before actually calling the common API?

also are they really calling the exact same API as the Core Keyboard GUI, which people have been using as a workaround?

I'm not a real programmer (javascript or otherwise), but skipping input events (clicks and keystrokes) on webpages is quite a common sighting and so are interrupted routines on js-heavy webpages, so wherever the issue is it doesn't look that surprising over web technologies, wereas this just doesn't happen for native apps... like never ever ever

[Lord Nailon]

Yep, same problem here. Very, very annoying.
It tends to happen in game mode too, but is not as outrageous as in desktop mode.

[Arnookie]

It's the single most frustrating thing about the deck. We need a fix as soon as possible from #valve