Yes, I don't have configured any way to bring up a keyboard when not in a text entry field though, so no luck there.
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FWIW, Hacker's Keyboard can do this. I don't like it as a default keyboard but it has a few nice features. I think long pressing the menu button does it for the AOSP keyboard and Gboard but phones don't include physical buttons anymore, let alone the menu button.
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Kinda similar to how AOSP has generic support for undo / redo in standard widgets like text fields, but most keyboards don't provide an undo / redo button and the ctrl-z / ctrl-shift-z keybinds aren't exposed via most virtual keyboards in their layout since they don't offer ctrl.
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All the Android keyboards are so bad. I use an abandoned one called multiling. That and hacker's are least-bad. A good one would provide blank keycaps matching compact pc physical layout and let you apply any xkb layout file on top of it.
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It's unfortunate that Google stopped developing their keyboard (Gboard now) as an enhancement to the open source AOSP keyboard project. They've made massive improvements which would have been included in it and it serves as the basis for most of the alternate keyboard projects.
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It's so ridiculous that "keyboard apps" (rather than keyboard layouts) are even a thing.
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It's support for alternate input methods in general. It covers the input method (typing on keys, swipe, more complex methods for other languages), suggestions, spelling correction, clipboard management (no longer allowed to be done by other apps) and approaches to multi-language.
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Yes, but an app should only be needed if you want a new *method*. If you just want a different layout, the solution should be pure data, no code. This would also make it safe (unlike current situation where keyboard apps can be keysniffers/dataminers).
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I agree. AOSP keyboard did always have some internal support for this and in Gboard they offer alternate layouts and themes. I don't think they support arbitrary control over it (yet) rather than only assorted predefined choices, but it could. It became much better over time.
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I find it much harder to type precisely / accurately on the AOSP keyboard, and it's very annoying not being able to move the cursor for text selection via swipe on the keyboard instead of the finicky selection handles. I don't understand why there's no decent open source project.
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There are a few good keyboard apps, but all of the open source ones are just terrible. AOSP keyboard was fine at the time, but it hasn't aged well, since the standards expected of a virtual keyboard have gotten way higher. This applies in some other areas too.