Bug#988540: im-config: breaks the keyboard configuration
Hi,
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.net>
...
> > 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.
I agree. There was no need to set "Depends" to "ibus" by ZOOM. (The best option is
"No mention" and the 2nd best option is "Recommends:".)
On default desktop Debian install, GNOME recommends "ibus" via gnome-shell. So there
is no need to force pulling in "ibus". "ibus" is normally installed.
(I was a bit surprised to see "ibus" instead of an alternative input method framework
"fcitx" here. As I remember, Zoom was started by chinese ex-patriots in USA and used
some servers in China to service ZOOM. This raised security concern during the
initial COVID-19 crisis. Although the upstream authors of both programs seem to have
Chinese name, generally fcitx is more popular with Chinese speaking people. I don't
know if ZOOM has issue with fcitx)
> 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.
We can't create random monkey patch to warn user. I am afraid it will be complicated
and unmaintainable.
This is somewhat like some European language user sometimes still insists to have
Latin1 encoding instead of UTF-8. (Or sysvinit instead of systemd). Transition is
always painful.
Of course, if I get a clean set of code as a patch, I will merge it. Scanning user's
home directory is messy task I am not so keen to pursue.
What I suggest is write up best practice of XKB input transition to ibus in a page
wiki.debian.org. Then create wishlist bug report to ibus asking to add pointer to
the wiki page mentioned in README.Debian. You can be the best person to do this ;-)
> > 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.
Without im-config, people used the user's .xsession to set up input method. im-
config honor such setting by checking some environment variables. If there is such a
marker variable for XKB, we can disable ibus if someone write patch.
Osamu
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