Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

I came here to seek your advice when it comes to using Inkscape without a keyboard. I have recently purchased Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet and installed Inkscape on it without a hitch. Drawing with a physical pen on the screen is terrific!

However one issue that I ran into is that sometimes I need to use keyboard keys such as CTRL, ALT or SHIFT to e.g. select multiple objects. I tend to use the tablet as if it was a paper notebook, i.e. lying flat on the desk or holding it with my left hand -- in both cases having the keyboard unplugged in much more comfortable. However this means that whenever I want to perform such keyboard-requiring operations I need to scramble for the keyboard and connect it only for few seconds it takes to press the key.

I posit that it would be much more convenient if there was a way to have Inkscape enter a mode of "having CTRL pressed" using a button on the screen I can press with my pen, e.g. when using the Select tool, there would be a button on the top bar saying "select multiple" that could be turned on and off and would behave as if I was holding the CTRL key.

Is it possible to enable something like that in Inkscape? Possibly using some plug-in?

Hi.

Might be a silly workaround idea.
On win there is an option to have the keyboard on the screen, and if you could hack the os to be able to use two cursors at a time, it would all be fine.
(Though I couldn't do that earlier. Was trying to scratch without any special hardware on virtualdj.)

Hello JJReach,

It sounds as a kind of app-version of Inkscape. At the moment I do not know of such an Inkscape function or plugin for Windows. I think this might be a request for the developers.
There is a GIMP & Inkscape app for Android with those modification keys on screen, but I think you cannot make that work in Windows?

What OS do you have installed on your device?

If it's Windows (not the type used in cell phones and low end tablets) you should be able to install Autohotkey on it.

If you're willing to spend some hours effort to understand it, you should be able to construct areas on the screen that when tapped - mimics a button or combination of buttons being hold down, until mouse release. Have done similar tricks on Windows XP so I know it should wiork.

However I think I will support Lazur URH suggestion and use a virtual keyboard, it take less time to get to work - some second compared to half a week

I'm on Windows 8.1 Pro, so yes, this is the full Windows.

But this:
"There is a GIMP & Inkscape app for Android with those modification keys on screen"
Sounds like exactly what I need. So big request to developers: if it is not too difficult, please let us enable this on Windows too!

In the meantime, I will try the other suggestions -- thank you for those!
If you come up with any other ideas, please let me know.

Dear JJReach,

Yes, it would be a very good thing if the developers would make such an app. There is a way to make a specific request, but I do not know how.
But please let us know if the suggestions work for you, so that other people who read this can learn from it too. Good luck with it!

Wow I haven't been here for a while.. though I remembered this discussion.

But I discovered a way to make your own on-screen keyboard for Windows!
Something I have been looking for too, because I would like to make screen casts. And then you need a way to visualise also the short key combinations on the screen.

The Windows keyboard is far too big, but has the advantage that it also displays the keys *Ctrl Shift Alt* you hit on your physical keyboard.

This is the software: Click-N-Type Visual.
With the additional CNTDesigner Keyboard Designer you can build your own on screen keyboard. It is very functional.