OKBoard doesn't seem to be available for the tablet (i486) on Openrepos (link). Have I missed something?

OKBoard targets phones with standard size / form factor and there are only ARM devices matching this description at the moment.

I do not even know how a swiping keyboard is supposed to work on a tablet in term of user experience (I have done some attempts, but with no success).

Also keep in mind that few people will bother to support the tablet due the small number that have been produced.

Bonjour and merci for your response. I do understand your reasoning. However, some of the i486 devices (also third party ones, not just the Jolla tablet) are not exceedingly huge. In fact, after upgrading my little tablet, I instinctive tried dragging my fingers across the keyboard only to remember I hadn't installed OKBoard.

OKBoard is such a wonderful implementation of a great concept. It would be great to have it available to i486 devices as well. Of course, I don't know how much trouble would be involved.

just compile it, it'll probably work just fine

I am afraid I'll need a hint (sorry about that). I tried unpacking the okb-keyboard-0.6.19.tar.gz file to my projects folder and then opened the .pro-file in Qt-Creator. Naively I just went for the green arrow to compile, but that failed. Is there anything else I may have missed?

Some tips to compile any packages with a .spec file, directly in SDK (I don't know about QtCreator way, sorry):

• Start the engine virtual box.
• Connect into it with: ssh -p 2222 -i $HOME/SailfishOS/vmshare/ssh/private_keys/engine/mersdk mersdk@localhost
• Go to the extracted folder: cd share/okb-engine
• Compile a new RPM there: mb2 -t SailfishOS-3.0.3.8-i486 -s rpm/okb-engine.spec build

Et voilà ! Adjust paths according to your machine of course.

@dcaliste, merci for your helpful tips. I got into the VM alright and started the compilation. However, I hit another roadblock. With the two packages, okb-keyboard and okb-engine I couldn't figure out where to put them. Apparently the compilation of the former fails because it needs the latter one. But I couldn't compile that on its own, either.

In particular, I unpacked both archives into separate directories. While trying to compile okb-keyboard, it told me it needed the .tgz in the rpm directory - easily done. However, then it required okb-engine, but just adding the .tgz to the same rpm directory didn't work.

I realize this is basic stuff and I am hoping I'm making any kind of sense. What a way to show you all of my ignorance.

I tried to compile the engine and indeed it is stopping in the install phase. Looking at the spec (you can open it, it's a text file), it requires two language tar files that I don't have. Maybe you can adjust the `tar -xvfj ${SOURCE1}` line to extract only what you need to for your language. You'll have to modify the for loop just after.

When a package is built and you hve RPM in the RPMS directory, install the development package in the SDK itself with:
sb2 -t SailfishOS-3.0.3.8-i486 -R rpm -U RPMS/okb-engine-devel-0.6.19.rpm
(adjust the name of the package of course, you'll need to install also the okb-engine one I guess, so put the two rpms on the same line)

Encore merci beaucoup pour ton aide. Indeed, same here. I hit that wall again. The error messages are identical, no matter whether I start the compilation process from the SDK (Qt Creator) or from within the VM through ssh. That might indicate that it is, in fact, exactly the same operation.

That made me think...

@eber42, I know this is quite an imposition. But if you got all the files set up (which I assume you might have), could you maybe try to compile this for i486 through the SDK?

Allow me to add another problem to this thread.

When I installed OKBoard to a slightly larger phone (OnePlus One 5.5" screen, so definitely armv7hl this time), it complained about the screen being too big and refused to work. I wonder, was this on purpose? After all, 5.5 inches aren't that huge. Not to mention some of us having clumsy/fat fingers...