Cannot install florence

Question

I'm no expert on this at all but I was trying to set up a pop up keyboard and have tried the matchbox keyboard which is fine, but I'm told florence keyboard pops up automatically. I'm using a raspberry pi4 with raspbian os. Started here... https://howtoraspberrypi.com/raspberry-pi-virtual-keyboard/ But florence is not availabe when using 'sudo apt install florence'. So went here... http://florence.sourceforge.net/english/install.html and did this...

$ tar -xjvf florence-0.6.2.tar.bz2

$ cd florence-0.6.2

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr

$ make

$ su -c "make install" (I am so noob, I could not get that to show as code, I have no hope)

Anyway, I then get the error... configure: error: Your intltool is too old. You need intltool 0.23 or later.

But I have the latest one! in fact it is newer than 0.23.

My /etc/apt/sources.list shows... deb http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/ bullseye main contrib non-free rpi

How to install florence onto my pi4?

Answer 1

On-screen keyboards don't "pop up automatically", instead, they hide themselves automatically when your focus is not in a text input field. You still have to run your keyboard manually or via your window manager's autorun script.

Florence package seems to have build issues in Bullseye. It seems to be available in Sid though.

Even if apt won't work, you can still try to install florence by manually downloading the *.deb package from http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/pool/main/f/florence/, installing it with sudo dpkg -i *.deb and then running sudo apt -f install to get the missing dependencies. No idea if it will work though, considering the reported issues.

Another option is to install a different keyboard which supports auto-hide. I heard onboard does support it, though I never tried it.

Answer 2

florence is available through the apt package repository. You can verify this as follows:

$ apt-cache search florence
florence - extensible and scalable virtual keyboard for X
libflorence-1.0-1 - extensible and scalable virtual keyboard for X
libflorence-1.0-dev - extensible and scalable virtual keyboard for X
qsapecng - symbolic analyzer and solver of linear analog circuits

I don't know why it won't install on your system - apt says it will install on mine - I bailed out at the yes/no question as I don't need it:

$ sudo apt update  # always before a new install
...
$ sudo apt install florence
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  adwaita-icon-theme at-spi2-core dconf-gsettings-backend dconf-service glib-networking glib-networking-common glib-networking-services
  gsettings-desktop-schemas gtk-update-icon-cache hicolor-icon-theme libatk-bridge2.0-0 libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libatspi2.0-0 libcairo-gobject2
  libcolord2 libdconf1 libepoxy0 libflorence-1.0-1 libgstreamer1.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libgtk-3-bin libgtk-3-common libjson-glib-1.0-0 libjson-glib-1.0-common
  liblcms2-2 libnotify4 libproxy1v5 librest-0.7-0 libsoup-gnome2.4-1 libsoup2.4-1 libwayland-client0 libwayland-cursor0 libwayland-egl1 libxcomposite1
  libxcursor1 libxinerama1 libxkbcommon0 libxrandr2 notification-daemon
Suggested packages:
  colord gstreamer1.0-tools gvfs liblcms2-utils
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  adwaita-icon-theme at-spi2-core dconf-gsettings-backend dconf-service florence glib-networking glib-networking-common glib-networking-services
  gsettings-desktop-schemas gtk-update-icon-cache hicolor-icon-theme libatk-bridge2.0-0 libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libatspi2.0-0 libcairo-gobject2
  libcolord2 libdconf1 libepoxy0 libflorence-1.0-1 libgstreamer1.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libgtk-3-bin libgtk-3-common libjson-glib-1.0-0 libjson-glib-1.0-common
  liblcms2-2 libnotify4 libproxy1v5 librest-0.7-0 libsoup-gnome2.4-1 libsoup2.4-1 libwayland-client0 libwayland-cursor0 libwayland-egl1 libxcomposite1
  libxcursor1 libxinerama1 libxkbcommon0 libxrandr2 notification-daemon
0 upgraded, 41 newly installed, 0 to remove and 8 not upgraded.
Need to get 22.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 80.0 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
$

I wonder if the tarball you downloaded was for arm architecture - or something else?

Addendum:

May 5, 2022: The florence package appears to have been pulled since I checked it yesterday. Today's apt-cache search yields:

$ apt-cache search florence
texlive-publishers - TeX Live: Publisher styles, theses, etc.

Strange business! The florence .deb package still appears in the repository here.