onscreen keyboard #2

So, it's automatically logging in. Now, for an on-screen keyboard.

Onboard (and onboard-settings) were installed by default (in /usr/bin, thus in $PATH). Ran the settings first, nice little dialogue, didn't do much obviously. Ran onboard from command line, segmentation fault. Hmm.

Can't be getting into a crazy core dump debug session, run up synaptic, and reinstall it; the same.

Ok, try out gok. That pops up with a 3x3 grid, a rather complex set of preferences (~8 tabs?!) and after 5 minutes tinkering, I saw no keyboard. Off.

Next, install orca. That pops up with a grand window, talking to me. As with gok, lots of tabs and speech and braille and all sorts, no keyboard. Off.

Run onboard again, feeling more desperate. The biggest keyboard I ever saw appeared, with a weird keyboard layout - so some progress... Open up settings, choose a new layout, don't do much else, then when I get the keyboard, it's qwerty.

It can be resized via gui handles easily enough, and seems to remember position & size. Set up a shortcut in top xfce launcher panel for easy access. And it works well enough with firefox.

I think i'll need to tinker with placement, size and things, it seems to get in the way a bit...

I may also consider xvkbd too...

[in summary, I don't know why it didn't work first time, I can only presume installing a whole bunch of stuff with orca helped out. gok is truly mystifying, so I wouldn't recommend that. all in all, a rather annoying experience for something so simple.]