Western keyboard layouts don't work after thai language login

[Tero Kuusela]

Binary package hint: xkeyboard-config
Binary package hint: gtk-im-libthai

(I'm setting up an Ubuntu system for a thai friend of mine. The laptop is in my possession until Monday 29th of May to provide further info and debug. After that I can only get to it occasionally.)

This is with the x86 Dapper, installed from beta2, last update today.

When selecting the thai language in gdm login, western layouts (tried various, most important for me is finnish) can't type all characters. Specifically, the AltGr doesn't seem to work in any of them nor do the Scandinavian special characters (a with dots, o with dots). The characters that can be typed do come according to the selected layout and when logging in with finnish or english language everything works as expected.

The characters that can be typed vary by application. It seems that the AltGr key is unfunctional in Gtk apps, but works in Firefox, OOo and gnome-terminal. The Scandinavian characters don't work anywhere.

I have tried different layouts, changing everything that seems relevant in the keyboard settings and changing the font settings. Nothing has helped.

I'm attaching the output of the following commands in case it might give some clues, but do note that I have changed almost every setting that's visible in these:

$ xprop -root | grep XKB
_XKB_RULES_NAMES_BACKUP(STRING) = "xorg", "pc105", "fi", "", ""
_XKB_RULES_NAMES(STRING) = "xorg", "pc105", "fi,th", ",", "grp:ctrl_shift_toggle"

$ gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd
 layouts = [fi,th]
 model = pc105
 options = [grp grp:ctrl_shift_toggle]
 overrideSettings = true

Let me know if you need further info!

[Tero Kuusela (teroajk)]

More information on this:

I tried to reproduce this with my desktop, in order to be able to debug even after I give the laptop away, but there the finnish layout works without problems even when logging in with thai language.

Both machines have the latest Dapper packages, but the desktop has been installed as Breezy and upgraded to Dapper about a week ago.

I assume the above is the reason for the difference, but just in case it's hardware specific, the laptop model is HP dv5129eu.

[Tero Kuusela (teroajk)]

Found the real culprit, gtk-im-libthai.

[Tero Kuusela (teroajk)]

Sorry about that last a bit uninformative comment, I'm just learning to use Malone.

Removing the package gtk-im-libthai fixes this problem. I see no ill effects from removing it either, thai input seems to work etc, but I don't actually understand written thai, so I might just not notice.

My desktop didn't have gtk-im-libthai installed when I tried this and that's why it worked. I can now reproduce the problem in my desktop machine by installing the package.

[Tero Kuusela (teroajk)]

This problem still persists with today's update to 7.10 and was also present in 7.04. I didn't try to fix it with 7.04, but with 7.10 the previous workaround of removing gtk-im-libthai does not work.

[Tero Kuusela (teroajk)]

The problem no longer disappears after removing gtk-im-libthai, so it probably has moved to some other package related to thai language support.

[brendon (brendon-schu)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Tero Kuusela (teroajk)]

I can confirm that the bug still exists in 8.10. I don't have any 9.04 alpha installations yet.

I added support for language thai from language settings, with all options selected in details. I also tried adding support for complex glyph input (SCIM). When logging in to a finnish language session, everything seemed to work fine. When logging in to a thai language session and setting the keyboard to finnish with the keyboard applet, at least letters äöå and AltGr didn't work.

[brendon (brendon-schu)]

Have you heard of scim-bridge? This is important for character language input, I always need to input and read Chinese so I remember a little bit of setting these things up...

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=scim-bridge
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SCIM

on the 2nd link there if you scroll down you can read about some settings for the bridge.

[rusivi2 (rusivi2-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for reporting this bug.

Is this an issue in Lucid?

[Tero Kuusela (teroajk)]

I tested with a fresh install of 10.04.1 + updates. This is still an issue.

In Lucid at least, there were no scim-packages installed when adding support for thai. Is the comment about scim-bridge still relevant? I never did get around to trying that workaround.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for language-support-th (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[rusivi2 (rusivi2-deactivatedaccount)]

Marking New based on comment #10.