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zw

Member

Registered: 2022-05-31

Posts: 19

Unable to type nonlatin characters via ibus in many (but not all) apps

I use the Openbox window manager, and have installed ibus and ibus-hangul in order to type hangul (Korean) characters.

I can input hangul characters in many apps, such as Firefox and Thunar FM, by switching my input method using the keybinding I have chosen (in my case Shift+Ctrl+Space).

However, there are many other apps in which this has no effect: I get latin characters no matter what. For example, in Alacritty, Kate, and PCManFM I cannot type hangul no matter what.

First, I tried manually setting the Shift+Ctrl+Space keyboard shortcut in Alacritty to do nothing to ensure that this wasn't a keybinding collision, which didn't work.

Next, I noticed a tip on the wiki here and added these environment variables:

GTK_IM_MODULE=xim
QT_IM_MODULE=ibus
XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus

But the problem persists.

A common characteristic of the apps that do not work is that they seem to all be Qt-based. So, I tried installing the ibus-qt package from the AUR, but had no luck (it also took hours to compile—I don't think this package is exactly what it says on the tin).

What additional diagnostics can I run to identify the source of this problem?

The following version numbers may be relevant:

ibus 1.5.26-2
ibus-hangul 1.5.4-3
openbox 3.6.1-8
alacritty 0.10.1-2

My computer is a Macbook Pro 9,2.

I use ibus-hangul in Ubuntu with Kate on my other machine, so my sense is that this setup should be possible.

Using fcitx instead of ibus is not an option for me because of a known issue with its Korean interface.

Last edited by zw (2022-06-10 14:17:43)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,573

Re: Unable to type nonlatin characters via ibus in many (but not all) apps

Neither alacritty nor pcmanfm are Qt based (pcmanfm-qt would be)
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ibus-qt depends on Qt4, which is dead in the water since years (and what probably took all the time to compile)

I know next to nothing about ibus, but for a pattern on alacritty and kate: they both likely use a monospace font, I assume you've a monospace font w/ hangul support installed?

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zw

Member

Registered: 2022-05-31

Posts: 19

Re: Unable to type nonlatin characters via ibus in many (but not all) apps

I assume you've a monospace font w/ hangul support installed?

Yes, I do, and I tried installing another just in case. I don't think it is a font issue, because I can paste hangul text into these apps just fine. It's only typing that's the issue.

Edit: I have fixed the problem for now by switching to fcitx5. A recent update to fcitx5-hangul seems to fix the issue I had previously. Nonetheless, I am still curious if there is a way to get this working in ibus, which has been more stable in my experience.

Last edited by zw (2022-06-11 00:07:01)

foehammer

Member

Registered: 2022-01-05

Posts: 4

Re: Unable to type nonlatin characters via ibus in many (but not all) apps

Just to Jump in, for non Latin input managers I have had the best success with SCIM, works perfectly out of the box with all apps.