Tablets and Slates

[PaulBennett]

Hi,

I have just installed Mageia 3 onto an Acer Iconia W700., Interesting experience.

In the installer it transpired that the ACER's keyboard is a Bluetooth connection which is not recognised by the installer program. In order to enter things like Root password and other information by the keyboard I had to borrow a proper USB cabled keyboard (which worked but I then needed a USB hub). Having managed to get to the final logging in bit I am impressed by how nice things seem to be, if a bit small on this screen. The mouse is via the touch screen but following the finger tips is a little tricky for it. You have to be sure to highlight the text box or bnutton you want to push and hope that your focus is still there when you come to make that push. It is workable though, with some care.

I am now going to look around for the virtual keyboard bit so that I can use the Acer in its travelable mode easily. I would welcome any tips and suggestions in honing the configuration.

In case anyone does not know it yet, the Acer Iconia W700 (I have the 64Gb version) is supplied with MS Windows 8. That OS lasted about 10 minutes on here as I had already decided on Mageia 3 for the most appropriate Linux to be using on it. It is a nice tablet/slate hardware wise and I hope more and more of teh Mageia crowd will consider adopting it. You have to get into doing the Legacy Boot in order to ditch Windows 8 but that is a simple matter of turning off the right way and selecting the most appropriate boot order. Then ensure you pick Legacy Boot. Have that USB keyboard and a multi-USB hub ready as well.

Hope to provide more info later.

[PaulBennett]

To provide an update, I have found what appears to be a decent virtual keyboard package in "Florence". I found the installation instructions on <http://florence.sourceforge.net/english/install.html>

Trying to get it installed leaves me wanting three things:-
No package named libxml2-dev
No package named libgconf2-dev
No package named libpanel-applet-2-devel

The first two I can only find with the devel tag.

Any comments and clues would be gratefully received.
TIA

[doktor5000]

Florence is included in Mageia repositories since Mageia 2, why don't you install it via software management?
For software management in general you should read our wiki page: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Software_management

[PaulBennett]

Florence is included in Mageia repositories since Mageia 2, why don't you install it via software management?
For software management in general you should read our wiki page: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Software_management

I'll take a look for it. I did an initial search for virtual keyboads and found nothing useful. Only a web search found the Florence package elsewhere and no mention of it under Mageia. I'll probably take a look tomorrow evening when I next get chance to do so.

Thanks for that heads up.

[dbg]

Here is a hint:

When you search for programs in MCC there is a little binocular icon next to where you type in your search string. It defaults to searching "in names" but if you don't know the name of the program you can change it to search "in description". I changed it and typed in "virtual keyboard" and florence came right up.

[doktor5000]

Or try Mageia Application Database: http://madb.org/

[PaulBennett]

Thanks guys for all the help so far.

I messed up big time and ended up having to reload Mageia 3 all over again (not a problem on the Acer tablet as I was still trying to get it to a workable arrangement). I gave up on Florence (still some issues and conflicts with stuff I couldn't find) and am now using Xvkbd which behaves well. Now trying to get Xkvbd to be active at the login box on the boot-screen and the password box on the locked screen. Even if I have to press the on-tablet hard windows button to get the keyboard that would be acceptable.

With that done and adding some gesture control of window sizing etc. I would consider it useable enough for my mobile needs.

The rest of Mageia 3 is a great product.

[PaulBennett]

Update:
It has been quite hectic but I have read quite a lot and am still hunting for how Mageia3 boots up. I have tried starting Xvkbd in various places without it appearing in time for the login bit (where you get the "Welcome to Localhost" screen) but it looks like I might need a Daemon to call it up at the appropriate time. One switch on the slate gives a four character sequence and that would be easily detectable if I were running a Daemon at the appropriate moment. I am also asking elsewhere about the Windows buttons on the slate (which so far I haven't discovered how it is sensed :-: not a keyboard code).

Am I on the right line of thinking here? Create a Daemon and let it get fired up in the initialisation of the run-levels?