iOS input fields & keyboard popup behavior unacceptable

Ionic Framework ionic-v3
1

Ionic version: (check one with “x”)
[ X ] 2.x

I’m submitting a … (check one with “x”)
[ X ] bug report

Current behavior:
On iOS:
Erratic behavior of keyboard show/hide when navigating forms. The keyboard only stays up when tapping (or scrolling) on an actual input field, resulting in a completely unacceptable user experience. It’s virtually impossible to properly fill out and navigate/scroll a longer form.

Expected behavior:
I expect the keyboard to either stay up all the time until dismissed by the user, eg via a ‘Done’ key.
OR
NOT to hide the keyboard when scrolling (no matter what element may be panned on) and NOT hiding it when tapping anywhere inside a form.

Steps to reproduce:
Any simple form will do which includes structures such as:

<ion-item>
    <ion-label fixed>Username</ion-label>
    <ion-input type="text" value=""></ion-input>
</ion-item>

Other information:
I’ve tried with or without these config settings:

ios: {
  scrollAssist: false,
  autoFocusAssist: false
}

but they make things even worse when active, randomly hiding content when the keyboard pops up.

Cordova CLI: 6.5.0 
Ionic Framework Version: 2.1.0
Ionic CLI Version: 2.2.1
Ionic App Lib Version: 2.2.0
Ionic App Scripts Version: 1.1.4
ios-deploy version: 1.9.1 
ios-sim version: 5.0.13 
OS: macOS Sierra
Node Version: v6.10.0
Xcode version: Xcode 8.2.1 Build version 8C1002
2

Murphy’s Law:

I just found the culprit, it’s in the native-input.ts code, see below.

Can we change the code to accept
a) accept a custom class to prevent the unnecessary blur() (next to input-cover)
b) can we have the tapped.classList.contains() part be looking also at parent elements?

If I artificially bypass the below check and hence avoid the blur() the form / input experience increases 1000 fold.

Thank you for the consideration -

NativeInput.prototype._focus = function () {
        var self = this;
        self.focusChange.emit(true);
        if (self._blurring) {
            // automatically blur input if:
            // 1) this input has focus
            // 2) the newly tapped document element is not an input
            (void 0) /* console.debug */;
            var unregTouchEnd = this._plt.registerListener(this._plt.doc(), 'touchend', function (ev) {
                var tapped = ev.target;
                if (tapped && self.element()) {
                    if (tapped.tagName !== 'INPUT' && tapped.tagName !== 'TEXTAREA' && !tapped.classList.contains('input-cover')) {
                        self.element().blur();
                    }
                }
            }, {
                capture: true,
                zone: false
            });
            self._unrefBlur = function () {
                (void 0) /* console.debug */;
                unregTouchEnd();
            };
        }
    };

Until we can more flexibly control the blurring of input fields, this Config setting might help a lot of folks:

ios: {
   inputBlurring: false
}