[Gusty] Installation of Chinese language support borks the keyboard

[Loïc Martin]

Binary package hint: language-support-zh

Installing Chinese language support and checking the "Enable support to enter complex
characters" box messes up the keyboard input.

After reboot, and under either an English (United Kingdom) or French (France) session, keys like ^ and ¨ doesn't work anymore : instead of waiting the vowel input to combine with it as in î and ï, they print ^i and ¨i.

Uninstalling Chinese language support and unchecking the "Enable support to enter complex
characters" box solves the problem after reboot, but then no Chinese support is installed - deinstalling, rebooting, then reinstalling, rebooting each time one has to change language in the same document is hardly a productivity boost.

[Loïc Martin (loic-martin3)]

Bug is reproducible on a computer with a fresh Gutsy installation.

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

No, this is not the same bug as bug #66104, although related.

This bug only happens when "/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic" is set to true, and #66104 only happens when it is set to false.

[Loïc Martin (loic-martin3)]

Reading the thorough explanation on bug #66104, it says /FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic has to be set to true manually. However, I didn't edit any files, it's just plain default Gutsy configuration.

Has this been changed in Gutsy final, and if so is it the reason why :
- keyboard's dead keys get borked by default;
- I can't use scim input anywhere, even using gnome's method to select scim input in, f.e., gedit?

In short, if I change /FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic to false (in user's scim.rc or whatever it's called) AND run "im-switch -s scim-immodule", will I be able to input Chinese (and hopefully keep the dead keys)?

I need to be able to input Chinese for a document due tomorrow, so it's getting a tad worrisome for me :{

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

Loïc Martin wrote:
> Reading the thorough explanation on bug #66104, it says
> /FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic has to be set to true manually.
> However, I didn't edit any files, it's just plain default Gutsy
> configuration.

A fresh gutsy install should have "/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic"
set to false. I don't know why your system isn't the case. Maybe
you used an old home directory?

> In short, if I change /FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic to false
> (in user's scim.rc or whatever it's called) AND run
> "im-switch -s scim-immodule", will I be able to input
> Chinese (and hopefully keep the dead keys)?

As far as I know, if you use "im-switch -s scim-immodule"
to change the scim settings, you don't need to worry about
the "/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic" value unless you use some
non-GTK and non-Qt applications. The "/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic"
should only affect XIM mode.

[Loïc Martin (loic-martin3)]

Nope, plain Gusty install. I formated the partition before install, and home is on that partition (I keep my docs in a separate partition).

My .scim/config has :
/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic = false

But I just uninstalled Chinese support and unchecked the "Enable support to enter complex
characters" box

I insist I've done a fresh install form the final cd release of Gutsy, so this bug should affect all users installing Chinese support under (at least) a french or english (GB) session (but I haven't tested it on a computer with only english GB and Chinese installed). The dead keys problem might not be seen by an English user, but the impossibility to input Chinese even in gedit sure will.

[Jifeng Zhang (zjfroot)]

The same thing happened under English(US) session with a Swedish
keyboard. But after I change some settings of SCIM, problem solved.

Right click on the icon of SCIM, choose "SCIM setup", then in
"IMEngine" ->"Global setup" ->"Other", enable "English/European".
After that you'd better restart your session.

Hope it works.

On 10/22/07, Loïc Martin <email address hidden> wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: language-support-zh
>
> Installing Chinese language support and checking the "Enable support to enter complex
> characters" box messes up the keyboard input.
>
> After reboot, and under either an English (United Kingdom) or French
> (France) session, keys like ^ and ¨ doesn't work anymore : instead of
> waiting the vowel input to combine with it as in î and ï, they print ^i
> and ¨i.
>
> Uninstalling Chinese language support and unchecking the "Enable support to enter complex
> characters" box solves the problem after reboot, but then no Chinese support is installed - deinstalling, rebooting, then reinstalling, rebooting each time one has to change language in the same document is hardly a productivity boost.
>
> ** Affects: language-support-zh (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: Confirmed
>
> --
> [Gusty] Installation of Chinese language support borks the keyboard
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/155780
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
> Simplified Chinese Translators, which is a bug contact for language-
> support-zh in ubuntu.
>

--
-------------------------
http://www.isk.kth.se/~jifeng

[Loïc Martin (loic-martin3)]

Thanks, Jifeng, but I already had French/European selected - actually, all possible languages are selected by default (even for languages I didn't install language support for).

The problems seems to be different.

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 05:31:06PM -0000, Loïc Martin wrote:
> Nope, plain Gusty install. I formated the partition before install, and
> home is on that partition (I keep my docs in a separate partition).
>
> My .scim/config has :
> /FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic = false
>
> But I just uninstalled Chinese support and unchecked the "Enable
> support to enter complex characters" box

Then I don't have an explanation. There are three Debian users that
confirm setting "/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic" to false makes deadkeys working
in XIM mode.

I don't use (or know much about) deadkeys myself, so I'll have to rely
on other people's report.

Ming
2007.10.23

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 10:57:58AM -0000, Loïc Martin wrote:
> Thanks, Jifeng, but I already had French/European selected - actually,
> all possible languages are selected by default (even for languages I
> didn't install language support for).

Is your keyboard layout set correctly in scim?

Ming
2007.10.23

[Loïc Martin (loic-martin3)]

Ming Hua, I don't know who edited the title of this bug report, but it has nothing to do with the bug I'm describing.

Here is an extract of my .scim/config (the whole file is attached if you want to have a look):
/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic = false

I purposely deleted my .scim directory to be sure I would get the default. My previous file also had /FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic = false

I'm under Ubuntu, not Kubuntu nor Debian.

I can confirm that it happens on any install I make of Gutsy, just following the steps in the description of the bug. Yhe problem isn't "SCIM breaks deadkey support when "/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic" set to true", it's "SCIM breaks deadkey support when "/FrontEnd/X11/Dynamic" set to anything" (although I didn't try setting it to true).

I've set my keyboard layout to French in scim, it doesn't change anything.

I've got scim input only in gnome applications like gedit - there, if I chose French, I have access to the dead keys. However, any input without scim has got the dead keys borked by scim.

On another note, I tried activating scim for all application with im-switch -z fr_FR -s scim, but it seem it's not enough, even though it was enough in Feisty. Is there any new step to get scim working again in Gutsy (I don't consider being able to use it only in gedit as "working")?

[Ming Hua (minghua)]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 04:20:24PM -0000, Loïc Martin wrote:
> Ming Hua, I don't know who edited the title of this bug report, but it
> has nothing to do with the bug I'm describing.

I edited the title. I thought this is the same bug as the one reported
in Debian about deadkeys. It seems I am wrong, and I've changed the
title back (along with other things). Sorry.

> On another note, I tried activating scim for all application with im-
> switch -z fr_FR -s scim, but it seem it's not enough, even though it was
> enough in Feisty.

Please don't mix different issues in the same bug report.

Ming
2007.10.23

[robinl (robinl-cfso1751)]

I've found the solution on Chinese Ubuntu forums on http://forum.ubuntu.org.cn/viewtopic.php?p=479741&sid=c37de1d11989db6ebe95227b35efa770#479818 ,
which say
sudo apt-get install scim-bridge
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim
change GTK_IM_MODULE=xim into GTK_IM_MODULE="scim-bridge"
and restart X.
This fixed the problem (both deadkey and SCIM) for me.

[Ikuya Awashiro (ikuya-fruitsbasket)]

Yes, scim-bridge is the best way to fix this problem.

[Loïc Martin (loic-martin3)]

Thanks, robinl. I can confirm your method works - but restarting X was not sufficient for me, I had to restart the system.

[cablop (cablop)]

It's true. Installing an asiatic language package and then marking "Enable support to enter complex characters" turn dead keys useless on KDE/QT applications and gnome applications.

I'm using Gnome on Gutsy, and lanuched some KDE applications like Amarok or K3B in it.

To place:

GTK_IM_MODULE="scim-bridge"

solves the problem for Gnome/GTK applications, but

QT_IM_MODULE="scim-bridge"

does not solve it for KDE/QT applications like Amarok and K3B.

I installed both clients for QT and KDE, but it's still not working.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10?

[Loïc Martin (loic-martin3)]

This bug doesn't appear in Intrepid with my locale (fr_FR) for Gnome applications + apps like Firefox in a Gnome session.

The default configuration for scim doesn't allow scim input in KDE application in a Gnome session, however deadkey also don't work (keyboard still "borked" according to my first description).

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Thank you for reporting. I think this may be fixed in 1.4.9 which is about to be released in Karmic. Please verify.

https://launchpad.net/~r0lf/+archive/hardy/+sourcepub/678492/+listing-archive-extra