keyboard shortcuts in Wayland impossible at present if ever?

[barfly]

I was advised to post this in these more general forums - first put into Resolute Racoon Review.

I am not referring to shortcuts as in links to applications or files/folders.

I am referring to the issue with Wayland and it's inability to implement a system-wide pasting of completed snippets of text or code to any desktop or activity. Before Kubuntu 24.01 there was a very simple system application to implement this in the system keyboard menu. With the introduction of Wayland, that has been quietly dropped for obvious reasons.

This has very serious ramifications for many users that are so used to a keyboard shortcut to insert a passage of text, an address, email address or snippet of oft-used code into a document or text.
The ramifications on the productivity of users so used to this facility is enormous.

Even in Windows it is a very simple thing to set up.

This is the primary failing of Wayland and one reason for the massive backlash against it's precipitous introduction. A form of keyboard logging across applications and desktops is required for this to be implemented - the antithesis of the whole philosophy behind Wayland.

I do not see how it is ever going to be resolved, but if Wayland is to be implemented wholesale across the Linux world we will be driving many workers back into the arms of Microsoft and Apple.

I sincerely hope this can be overcome in some way. The constant push by Canconical and other developers to prioritise security over function and usefulness is self defeating. Linux is inherently more secure than most other systems, and this constant drive to enhance security over functionality I find absolutely barmy.

[claydoh]

I'm still not clear in what you are taking about here. I can paste any text anywhere, including saved items using klipper, same as it has been. Nothing changed for me as far as I can recall, and I've been on Wayland for at least three, four years, if not longer.

ctrl-c, ctrl-v, meta-v for the selection pop out, or via the system tray widget.


In the current Plasma, you even have "bookmarked" snippets that don't get deleted when you clear klipper's history.

I make use of this as a main part of my workflow for quite a number of years now


There is along standing bug/missing feature in klipper where it doesn't paste the snippet automatically when selecting it, you need to still use a paste action. This goes back well before Wayland though.


Unless I am misunderstanding you ( quite possibly).

What is this system keyboard menu?

[barfly]

claydoh I am obviously not explaining it clearly enough for others to understand.

I am not talking about copy and paste.

I am talking about a primary repository of snippets of computer code, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and any odd bit of text that can be accessed system-wide across and by all applications and pasted into an application with a simple keystroke sequence, Not a temporary store in a clipboard, a permanent easily accessed pasting with a simple ctrl-alt-whatever for instance.

The security features of Wayland make this an impossibility.

They used to be stored in files like khotkeysrc, kglobalshortcutsrc, sometimes stored in " /usr/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/" and "~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/"

I hope I have explained things better this time.

I don't understand how Klipper can help, Klipper is a 3d printing application?

[claydoh]

Khotkeys is the missing application. Maybe. And/or keyboard automated tasks, that sort of thing. Khotkeys went away before Wayland as it was unmaintianed, though I am not sure how long ago. It was officially marked deprecated three years ago.

How were you setting this up, previously, if you can recall? All those config files listed have little to do with the task, on their own, but may be from third party service menus?

But what you really are looking for is a "text expansion" tool, perhaps.

The security features of Wayland make this an impossibility.

Nope, not correct
https://espanso.org/
https://espanso.org/docs/install/linux/#deb-wayland
Or maybe keyd , which works in either x or wayland, I use this on a Chromebook for layout fixes, but haven't gotten around to figuring out this sort of config for text, it inserts extra characters or other odd things, but I have not looked at it in a bit. The syntax for this is quite simple overall.

ydotool and custom kb shortcuts

and

https://gitlab.com/cscs/waybinder

as well as KDE-specific discussion last week here.
https://discuss.kde.org/t/a-general-...-functionality

I'd seen mention of using ibus (multilingual text input tools) to do this in Gnome, so I wonder if fcitx (used in Kubuntu and others) can do something similarAsIGoDownAnotherDeepRabbitHole.......


Not that this helps someone who needs this sort of functionality right now, though.

[skyfishgoo]

try looking at input-remapper

with that you can save predefined text to a keyboard shortcut like we used to be able to so with custom shortcuts

[claydoh]

try looking at input-remapper

with that you can save predefined text to a keyboard shortcut like we used to be able to so with custom shortcuts

And adding a note that this great tool has a decent enough GUI, compared to scripts and old service menus.

I forget about input-remapper supporting text input, since I have used keyd for remapping purposes for ages as it is part of my small collection of scripts for setting up my Chromebook after installing Linux on it.

But input-remapper requires either a possibly tedious input for text it seems, or needing a custom script to copy/paste for each snippet.

I don't understand how Klipper can help, Klipper is a 3d printing application?

Klipper is Plasma's clipboard tool, has been around as long as I have used KDE full time, so at least KDE2, probably longer as I did first use KDE at 1.4-ish

It can copy text etc, and in the latest Plasma 6.6 (in 26.04) it can save 'starred' items that won't be removed when clearing.

I use this over a text expander-type of tool as I do use a decent amount of saved snippets, but these are not static, and change quite often.

[barfly]

Espanso I found very convoluted and not really suitable, it doesn't have the same functionality, plus a massive learning curve when my old brain is full up with other stuff learned over the last 75 years...

Input remapper looks even more complicated. I thought things with computers were supposed to get easier, not harder as time goes on?

I cannot find any reference to Klipper anywhere other than as a 3D printer application. It is not in any repository I have looked and internet searches only show the 3D application.

[claydoh]

My last question still stands: How were you setting shortcuts for this before?
Can you give an example?

That may lead to what needs to be done, just using different tools.



Klipper is the clipboard manager in Plasma -it sits in your system tray.



It may not be actually called klipper anywhere visible these days, but it has been referred to it by that name for close to 30 years or more. It is not so much a standalone thing like it was back in the day.

https://www.howtogeek.com/kde-plasma...s-one-feature/
https://userbase.kde.org/Klipper
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma...ref_type=heads
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klipper


This is what it looks like in Plasma 6.5


Pretty much the same as Plasma 6.5 and earlier, but with saved items.

[barfly]

claydoh Thanks for your continued persistence with this it is very gratifying. you ask "My last question still stands: How were you setting shortcuts for this before?
Can you give an example?

I no longer have any installed o/s's such as 16.04 which have the old khotkeys which is the really brilliant little tool that KDE had, so I cannot show you how great it was.

I now understand what you mean by Klipper. I have looked at it in detail but I cannot see a way to insert SAVED snippets locked to a keystroke sequence available on all desktops/screens and all applications. Even with the extended menus, there is nowhere to achieve what was so easy with khotkeys.

Every application I look at studiously avoids the very thing that most users find indispensable, how to simply map a text block of SAVED text to a keyboard sequence. Nothing I have looked at so far does it.

The only thing that comes close is Autokey, and that does not work on Wayland, as I stated before, nothing can work because the whole ethos of Wayland is to sandbox the keyboard into little compartments that cannot be shared between screens or applications.
You stated earlier that is not true, and pointed out an extremely complicated messy way that it may achieve this, you lost me in the first few stansas.. How do you expect new converts to Linux will be able to do this?

I have looked at keyd and ydotool, both are extremely complicated to implement to achieve a simple task. If Autokey could be ported to Wayland that would be ideal, but wayland specifically excludes any trans-application trans-window usage, that is the whole point of Wayland.

So I'm really sorry, none of your solutions comes anywhere close to khotkeys. Espanso does come closer than the others, but is very difficult to set up.

Until this hurdle is overcome in an easily newbie-orientated way, then there will be many would-be converts to Linux driven away.

Once again, thank you for your input, it is very much appreciated.

[claydoh]

Yes, but how did you do this with khotkeys? Even a rough example might point how to do it in the current shortcut tool.



But, I thought autokey was a text-config based tool, loke esspanso
Keyd IS text based, but overall a lot simpler

[meta]
f1 = macro(my.email.com)​

BUTT autokey has a GUI, I discovered.
AND it has GUIs.
Unfortunately, it has Wayland support , but it needs to be compiled, and I don't see anyone offering a PPA or repo with pre-release packages.
(the last autokey official release was in 2022, if that tells you anything)
Reading their github issues and discussion, it seems like it is working, but no idea how long before an official release/

There is a fork of it, with Wayland, and specifically KDE support, if you are adeventuous.

https://github.com/dlk3/autokey-wayland

installation:

https://autokey-wayland.readthedocs....st/ubuntu.html

just substitute autokey-qt in place of -gtk

It is working for me, in brief testing.

[skyfishgoo]

the input-remapper macro language is a bit finicky, but it is more than up to the task of doing what you want to do.

i can map ctrl+shift+p to the following macro and have it enter my webpage URL into any text box

modify(shift_L,key(p)).key(u).key(t).
modify(shift_L,key(p)).key(e).key(o).key(p).key(l) .key(e).
modify(shift_L,key(o)).key(v).key(e).key(r).
modify(shift_L,key(p)).key(r).key(o).key(f).key(i) .key(t).
key(KEY_DOT).key(o).key(r).key(g).
key(KEY_ENTER)​

so now when i hit ctrl+shift+p on my keyboard i get

PutPeopleOverProfit.org

[skyfishgoo]

i made a little bash script to help write input-remapper macro's since it is kinda tedious.

it can handle all the regular keys and their shifted variants

i requires kdialog for the i/o which most kubuntu users should have installed.

#!/bin/bash
#uncomment the next line for diagnostic help.
# set -x

#this will take written input and write an input-remapper macro to produce
#the exact same string which can be mapped to a keyboard shortcut

textIn=$(kdialog --textinputbox "write the desired macro output" "Hello, World!")
len=${#textIn}
macro=""

for (( i=0; i<$len; i++)) ; do

    ch=${textIn:$i:1}

#covers upper&lower case and a few punctuation characters, or exits if not listed
    case $ch in
        [a-z] | [0-9])
            macro="$macro key($ch)."
            ;;
        [A-Z])
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key($ch))."
            ;;
        \`)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_GRAVE)."
            ;;
        \~)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_GRAVE))."
            ;;
        !)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(1))."
            ;;
        @)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(2))."
            ;;
        \#)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(3))."
            ;;
        $)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(4))."
            ;;
        %)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(5))."
            ;;
        ^)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(6))."
            ;;
        \&)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(7))."
            ;;
        \*)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(8))."
            ;;
        \()
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(9))."
            ;;
        \))
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(0))."
            ;;
        -)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_MINUS)."
            ;;
        _)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_MINUS))."
            ;;
​        =)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_EQUAL)."
            ;;
        +)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_EQUAL))."
            ;;
        [)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_LEFTBRACE)."
            ;;
        {)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_LEFTBRACE))."
            ;;
        ])
            macro="$macro key(KEY_RIGHTBRACE)."
            ;;
        })
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_RIGHTBRACE))."
            ;;
        \\)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_BACKSLASH)."
            ;;
        \|)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_BACKSLASH))."
            ;;
        \;)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_SEMICOLON)."
            ;;
        :)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_SEMICOLON))."
            ;;
         \')
            macro="$macro key(KEY_APOSTROPHE)."
            ;;
        \")
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_APOSTROPHE))."
            ;;
        ,)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_COMMA)."
            ;;
        \<)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_COMMA))."
            ;;
        .)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_DOT)."
            ;;
        \>)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_DOT))."
            ;;
         /)
            macro="$macro key(KEY_SLASH)."
            ;;
        \?)
            macro="$macro modify(shift_L,key(KEY_SLASH))."
            ;;
         ' ')
            macro="$macro key(space)."
            ;;​
        *)
            echo "$ch is not allowed"
            exit 1
            ;;
    esac

    ((n++))
    if [[ $n -gt 3 ]] ; then
        macro=$macro"\n"                #keeps output to reasonable line lengths
        n=0
    fi

done

kdialog --textinputbox "copy the result and paste it\ninto input-remapper's output box" "$macro"

​