[BUG] jtx input fields don't accept characters via a VNC connection

[git-3847]

Describe the bug
I have a VNC server on my phone (droidVNC-NG), this makes it much easier to do lots of tasks at my finger friendly notebook or desktop keyboard. I recently installed jtxBoard (and like it a lot, with a few reservations), but its the first Android app I've encountered where I couldn't use VNC keyboard input. I have to use the soft keyboard on the device (either through VNC mouse events or true screen events).

To Reproduce

1. Install droidVNC-NG
2. Connect to the phone with a standard vnc client (I use FreeBSD vncviewer)
3. Test keyboard input with other apps (Email client, calendar, text editor)
4. Test keyboard input on jtxBoard (and hopefully reproduce this issue!)

Expected behavior

1. It would be awesome if the VNC generated keystrokes got to the jtx input field

Screenshots
Not applicable

Device and version

• Teracube_2e_A11_05
• Android 11
• jtx Board version: 2.09.00.gplay
• Downloaded from: Google Play (and gleefully paid up)

[patrickunterwegs]

Hi @git-3847 , thanks for your feedback and issue report!
I will have a bit of a closer look at this, but it's very likely that this is related to the UI framework. jtx Board is using Jetpack Compose, which is the newest UI framework by Google. Older apps are likely to still use XML layouts.
From the UI framework the apps uses default textboxes, the customization that is done is only applied via the default customization options, so there's no custom implementation on any textfield.

So even if I have a detailed look now, it's very unlikely that I would find a switch or so that would just solve the problem. I mean, why shouldn't that switch be on in the first place then.
I'll try it out, but I believe it would rather be an issue in droidVNC-NG, that doesn't properly forward the information to textfields based on Jetpack Compose. Or it's a problem of the UI component itself (I also wouldn't be surprised about that because there are also some other edge-case issues in other use cases).