fix: skip unbridged IBus on KDE Plasma Wayland (#577)

* fix(injection): skip unbridged IBus on KDE Plasma Wayland

Do not auto-start XIM ibus-daemon on Wayland (circular viability check).
On KDE, require KWin VirtualKeyboard enabled before selecting IBus.

Fixes #574

* refactor(injection): tighten KDE VirtualKeyboard bridge check

Ponytail cleanup: shorter logs and fewer failure branches, same behavior.

* style: black-format ibus daemon Wayland test for CI

* fix(injection): parse KWin VirtualKeyboard gdbus variants strictly

Match <<true>>/<<false>> wrappers instead of bare substrings so ambiguous
gdbus output cannot flip the #574 IBus bridge decision.

Co-authored-by: Jatin K Malik <jatinkrmalik@users.noreply.github.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Cursor Agent <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Co-authored-by: Jatin K Malik <jatinkrmalik@users.noreply.github.com>

src/vocalinux/text_injection/ibus_engine.py

@@ -269,8 +269,10 @@ def start_ibus_daemon():
     """
     Start the IBus daemon if it's not already running.
 
-    This is useful for desktop environments where IBus doesn't start automatically,
-    such as some KDE Plasma installations or minimal window managers.
+    X11 only. On Wayland we must not spawn ``ibus-daemon -x -d -r``: that XIM-mode
+    daemon is not bridged to the compositor, but still makes
+    ``is_ibus_daemon_running()`` return True and leads to silent no-op injection
+    (issue #574). The compositor/DE must own the Wayland-bridged IBus instance.
 
     Returns:
         True if daemon was started or already running, False on failure
@@ -278,6 +280,11 @@ def start_ibus_daemon():
     if is_ibus_daemon_running():
         return True
 
+    if _is_wayland_session():
+        # XIM -x is not compositor-bridged; spawning it only fools the pgrep check (#574).
+        logger.debug("Not starting ibus-daemon on Wayland (see #574)")
+        return False
+
     if not is_ibus_available():
         return False
 

src/vocalinux/text_injection/text_injector.py

@@ -233,6 +233,57 @@ class TextInjector:
         "weston",
     )
 
+    def _kde_virtual_keyboard_enabled(self) -> bool:
+        """Return True when KWin VirtualKeyboard / input method is enabled.
+
+        On KDE Plasma Wayland, IBus only reaches native apps when this is on
+        (issue #574). Disabled or unqueryable → treat IBus as unbridged.
+        """
+        try:
+            result = subprocess.run(
+                [
+                    "gdbus",
+                    "call",
+                    "--session",
+                    "--dest",
+                    "org.kde.KWin",
+                    "--object-path",
+                    "/VirtualKeyboard",
+                    "--method",
+                    "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get",
+                    "org.kde.kwin.VirtualKeyboard",
+                    "enabled",
+                ],
+                capture_output=True,
+                text=True,
+                timeout=2,
+            )
+        except (subprocess.SubprocessError, FileNotFoundError) as e:
+            logger.info(
+                "Could not query KWin VirtualKeyboard (%s); treating IBus as unbridged.",
+                e,
+            )
+            return False
+
+        out = (result.stdout or "").strip().lower() if result.returncode == 0 else ""
+        # gdbus prints variant wrappers like: (<<true>>,) or (<<false>>,)
+        if "<<true>>" in out:
+            return True
+        if "<<false>>" in out:
+            logger.info(
+                "KWin Virtual Keyboard is disabled; IBus commits will not reach "
+                "native apps. Falling back to ydotool/wtype. Enable: System "
+                "Settings → Keyboard → Virtual Keyboard → IBus Wayland."
+            )
+            return False
+
+        logger.info(
+            "KWin VirtualKeyboard not confirmed (rc=%s out=%r); treating IBus as unbridged.",
+            result.returncode,
+            result.stdout,
+        )
+        return False
+
     def _wayland_compositor_bridges_ibus(self) -> bool:
         """Whether native Wayland clients receive IBus commits on this compositor.
 
@@ -242,6 +293,10 @@ class TextInjector:
         those we must use a virtual-keyboard tool (wtype/ydotool) instead. We use
         a denylist rather than an allowlist so that unrecognised desktops keep the
         previous IBus-preferred behaviour.
+
+        On KDE Plasma Wayland, bridging also requires KWin VirtualKeyboard to be
+        enabled (issue #574); otherwise commit_text succeeds at the IBus layer
+        but never reaches apps.
         """
         if self.environment != DesktopEnvironment.WAYLAND:
             # X11 / XWayland: IBus reaches apps through XIM regardless of DE.
@@ -250,7 +305,11 @@ class TextInjector:
             os.environ.get(var, "")
             for var in ("XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP", "XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP", "DESKTOP_SESSION")
         ).lower()
-        return not any(name in desktop for name in self._IBUS_UNBRIDGED_COMPOSITORS)
+        if any(name in desktop for name in self._IBUS_UNBRIDGED_COMPOSITORS):
+            return False
+        if _is_kde_plasma_session():
+            return self._kde_virtual_keyboard_enabled()
+        return True
 
     def _ydotool_socket_paths(self) -> list:
         """Return candidate Unix socket paths used by ydotoold."""