Bug#988540: im-config: breaks the keyboard configuration
On 2022-05-21 00:05:09 +0900, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> Classic X environment supports to enter non-ASCII (latin) characters
> via XKB input and some people still want to use this via this old
> setting method.
>
> Bug was filed by an annoyed user who lost access to functionalities
> offered by his old fashioned XKB input setting.
Well, I didn't know that XKB was old fashioned (I started to use it
in 2011, as a migration from xmodmap). I may consider to move to ibus
if there are no drawbacks (and with some hope that long-standing XKB
related bugs disappear). That said...
> This happened because ZOOM (this package is external to Debian)
> provides its DEB package with its "Depends" listing ibus.
>
> It is reasonable for ZOOM to support Chinese and Japanese input and
> list ibus as dependency. (XKB can't support Chinese nor Japanese
> input)
I doubt that support for Chinese and Japanese input is specific to
Zoom. The dependency should rather be at a higher level in such a
case (the desktop environment?). But since the issue is in the Zoom
package, not provided by Debian, nothing can be done here concerning
this point.
> ibus merely recommends im-config for easy set-up but this fact pulls
> in im-config as its default behavior.
>
> im-config is a glue layer code to support keyboard input with focus
> to use modern mothods (such as ibus). im-config's default behavior
> is to use ibus (reasonable default choice).
>
> ibus can (I think) offer XKB equivalent input functionality if
> configured correctly. I don't use such feature so I can't explain
> with confidence. Here are some references which might help.
> *
> https://superuser.com/questions/1637594/how-to-pass-xkb-options-to-ibus-and-use-them-with-m17n-engines
> (2021)
> * https://vas.neocities.org/custom_keyboard_layout_xkb_ibus.html (2020)
> * https://askubuntu.com/questions/1139936/ubuntu-mate-disable-xkb-and-use-ibus (2019)
> * https://askubuntu.com/questions/1077683/ibus-xkb-engine-layouts-dont-work (2018)
> * https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IBus#Troubleshooting
>
> (If I recall correctly, ibus-xkb code has been merged into ibus.
> ibus should offer this XKB input functionality by now.)
Thanks for the information.
> Also for im-config, im-config can be configured not to use ibus by
> running this command:
>
> im-config -n none
>
> and reboot.
OK. But note that an important part of the issue was that it took me
some time to figure out what was going on: I could notice the breakage
only after logging in again one week later, and I didn't know that this
was related to ibus and im-config (which I had never heard of before,
and I probably forgot that they had been installed). The fact that
I didn't get a warning or an error message in the first place is not
nice, leaving the user in the dark.
> For both ibus and im-config, the desirable user experience can be
> provided by proper user configuration.
>
> So there is no bug on im-config's parts.
IMHO, the user's .xsession file shouldn't be run before im-config has
loaded its configuration.
> (Besides, you can remove im-config too since it is only
> recommended.)
But this doesn't solve the problem that one doesn't know what's going
on (see above).
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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