Deadkeys won't work in KDE applications after today's update (KDE 4.4 packages)

[Vítor E. Silva Souza]

As you can see from the attached sources.list, I have included Kubuntu PPA in my repositories to upgrade KDE to version 4.4 as announced in Feb 10th, 2010. I had been using KDE 4.4 since the RC2 version made available in Kubuntu PPA on Jan 25th, 2010, but this more recent upgrade cause deadkeys to stop working on KDE applications.

On KDE applications (e.g. KMail, Kile, Choqok, Kate, etc.) if I type
' + a
I get
´a
instead of
á

Non-KDE applications (Google Chrome, Firefox, OpenOffice, Mendeley Desktop, The Gimp, Eclipse) were not affected and work as expected. Skype was affected, although it's not a KDE application. Don't know why, maybe it uses Qt or something...

On System Settings > Keyboard Layout, if I change my layout from "US International with deadkeys" to "US International (Default)", all applications work correctly, i.e., typing
'
outputs
'

Under KDE applications, when using deadkeys, typing
'
gives me
´

I hope I was able to explain this right. Here are some version numbers for my system:

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10

$ uname -a
Linux seattle 2.6.31-20-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 8 09:05:19 UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

[Vítor E. Silva Souza (vitorsouza)]

I'm attaching also the log from my latest apt-get dist-upgrade, in case you're interested in which packages were updated. One of them caused the issue...

[Vítor E. Silva Souza (vitorsouza)]

I managed to fix the issue, but I'm not sure what I did. I got some help on this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1404209

From that, I issued the command:

sudo im-switch -s none

Because it didn't change anything immediately, I then installed ibus (the guy said that ibus was the default for KDE 4.4, so it should have been installed, no?):

sudo apt-get install ibus

After I restarted the computer, the problem was gone. Deadkeys work again.

Thank you,
Vítor Souza

[Eberle Rambo (rambo-ufsc)]

I did what you said but it won't work...
The variables $XMODIFIERS, $GTK_IM_MODULE and $QT_IM_MODULE are not set! I've installed the ibus but nothing happened.

[Eberle Rambo (rambo-ufsc)]

Now it's working! I just had to execute this line:

sudo im-switch -s default-xim

[Vítor E. Silva Souza (vitorsouza)]

Like I said in the forum (I posted the link to the thread before), I did try the different options of input. I guess the last one I tried was default-xim then. But good thing someone else had the same issue, so now we have a confirmation of the workaround. Just issue the "sudo im-switch -s default-xim" like Eberle said.

Thanks Eberle!

[Gustavo A. Díaz (gdiaz)]

I've tested the suggested Fix in this last entry (sudo im-switch -s default-xim) and didn't worked:

gustavo@Anakin:~$ sudo im-switch -s default-xim
No system wide default defined just for locale es_AR .
Use "all_ALL" quasi-locale and set IM.
update-alternatives: usar /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default-xim para proporcionar /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL (xinput-all_ALL) en modo manual

And nothins happens, even restarting KDE or rebooting....

Any tip?

[Vítor E. Silva Souza (vitorsouza)]

Unfortunately no... :(

I installed ibus, set im-switch to none, then set it back to default-xim, then restarted. Eberle just set it to default-xim and it worked. I don't know why it's not working for you.

Vítor

[Gustavo A. Díaz (gdiaz)]

Now does work with that :S weird...

[Gustavo A. Díaz (gdiaz)]

Also, i think cause should be performed without the sudo, cause for you user...

[Gustavo A. Díaz (gdiaz)]

Hi, since today updates, now that fix does not work anymore for me...

[Ben M. (bmhm)]

You either need to log out and in again or go to your system settings, re-select the KDE keyboard layout and apply it again. Be sure to do that after executing: sudo im-switch -s default-xim (yes, as root!).

This way it worked for me without logging out and in: ñ ï ç
I updated my KDE SC to the latest 4.4 just a few minutes ago.

Hope that helps.

[Gustavo A. Díaz (gdiaz)]

That does NOT work either... I issued the command sudo im-switch -s default-xim, then reselect the regional settings and added the keyboard layout... still the same.

[Ralph Janke (txwikinger)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the development release - Maverick Meerkat with KDE4.5beta2. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ .

Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Alessandro Ghersi (alessandro-ghersi)]

If it's still an issue with KDE SC 4.5.1 from Kubuntu backport please open a new bug.