ibus-pinyin can no longer re-arrange list candidate sequence

[Ping-Wu]

As I understand it, ibus-pinyin is being scheduled to be deprecated. The last version of Ubuntu in which I can still use ibus-pinyin productively is 18.04/18.10. In 19.04 and 19.10, ibus-pinyin loses its ability to re-arrange the sequence in which the candidate words appear on the screen. This is a must-have feature for any Chinese input method, without it, ibus-pinyin is now rendered essentially unusable.

Although Ubuntu now uses ibus-libpinyin as the default Chinese input option, this method is structurally and fundamentally inferior to ibus-pinyin. As a native Chinese user, I much prefer ibus-pinyin. Some of the key reasons include: stability (ultra-stable), ease of adding own dictionary (including symbols, phrases, etc.), and seamless porting of user dictionary to a different system.

To the best of my observations, most of the members in the Chinese Ubuntu forum also prefer ibus-pinyin over ibus-libpinyin (actually I doubt any of the more senior members is using ibus-libpinyin). The overwhelming number of members actually use sogou pinyin（搜狗拼音）; however, this method depends on fcitx, which is not being actively maintained. Sogou pinyin is not nearly as snappy or stable as ibus-pinyin. But most important, it is a proprietary software and when problems occur, we are stuck! At one time, the problem dragged on for more than a month without a work-around. For something as critical as an input method, this is not acceptable, especially for business use.