Buggy interaction between keyboard layouts and input methods

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,
1

Context: I have a laptop with a belgian keyboard, and an external keyboard set to qwerty (where I want to use eurkey layout) (and I use my laptop keyboard when in a meeting room for example, while my external keyboard is for when I’m at my desk).

I did a fresh install of kubuntu 24.04 last week, and trying to enable eurkey was difficult: first of all I ended up at the “input method” settings (by the way, what does “input method on” or “off” even mean?), where the only thing that looked like eurkey was a sub-layout of catalan?

Anyway, that seemed to work but only in specific supported text fields, and changing between the two was not saved globally (i.e. every time I switched to a new window, I had to make the change again, sometimes it even reverted in the same window, still don’t really get what was going on).

Next I discovered the good setting: keyboard layout, where I could easily add eurkey on top of belgian and just switch globally whenever I needed to, great. However the input method thing “overruled” my keyboard layout settings at seemingly random times (even replacing the country codes in the task manager in exactly the same way), I needed to delete all input method groups and after another restart it seems to not pop up anymore.

tl;dr:

  • what is input method actually intended for?
  • how do I get rid of it?
1 Like
2

The poorly named “Input Method” protocol and related software is meant to solve the problems with inputing text in complex text languages such as Japanese. For European languages it rarely makes sense, but that fact is often poorly documented.

I’m not sure how you got your “input method settings” - there are various different “input method clients”, none of which are normally installed by default and you did not specify, but the best way to get your system back to a usable state is to uninstall the input method client you have installed. If you are not sure, search for “scim”, “ibus” or “fcitx”.

3

Thanks for those clarifications, it makes a bit more sense now :smiley:

I didn’t actively install any of those, but I find them all when I check apt list (see below). I also see that kde-config-fcitx5/noble doesn’t have the “automatic” tag, so that’s probably the “real” culprit. Can I just safely apt remove that and done?

apt list outputs

~  apt list --installed | grep scim  :heavy_check_mark:  at 01:02:20 pm

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

libscim8v5/noble,now 1.4.18+git20211204-0.2build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
~  apt list --installed | grep ibus  :heavy_check_mark:  at 01:03:49 pm

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

ibus-data/noble,noble,now 1.5.29-2 all [installed,automatic]
libibus-1.0-5/noble,now 1.5.29-2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libusb-1.0-0/noble,now 2:1.0.27-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libusbmuxd6/noble,now 2.0.2-4build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
~  apt list --installed | grep fcitx  :heavy_check_mark:  at 01:03:56 pm

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

fcitx5-chinese-addons-bin/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-chinese-addons-data/noble,noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 all [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-chinese-addons/noble,noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 all [installed]
fcitx5-config-qt/noble,now 5.1.4-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-data/noble,noble,now 5.1.7-1build3 all [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-frontend-all/noble,noble,now 5.1.7-1build3 all [installed]
fcitx5-frontend-gtk3/noble,now 5.1.1-1build2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-frontend-gtk4/noble,now 5.1.1-1build2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-frontend-qt5/noble,now 5.1.4-1build5 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-frontend-qt6/noble,now 5.1.4-1build5 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-material-color/noble,noble,now 0.2.1-1 all [installed]
fcitx5-module-chttrans/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-module-cloudpinyin/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-module-fullwidth/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-module-lua-common/noble,noble,now 5.0.12-1 all [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-module-lua/noble,now 5.0.12-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-module-pinyinhelper/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-module-punctuation/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-modules/noble,now 5.1.7-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-pinyin-gui/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-pinyin/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5-table/noble,now 5.1.3-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fcitx5/noble,now 5.1.7-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
kde-config-fcitx5/noble,now 5.1.4-1 amd64 [installed]
libfcitx5-qt-data/noble,noble,now 5.1.4-1build5 all [installed,automatic]
libfcitx5-qt1/noble,now 5.1.4-1build5 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libfcitx5-qt6-1/noble,now 5.1.4-1build5 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libfcitx5config6/noble,now 5.1.7-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libfcitx5core7/noble,now 5.1.7-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libfcitx5gclient2/noble,now 5.1.1-1build2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libfcitx5utils2/noble,now 5.1.7-1build3 amd64 [installed,automatic]

4

I don’t see any reason why removing this will cause any problems. When you run sudo apt purge fcitx5-chinese-addons fcitx5-frontend-all fcitx5-material-color kde-config-fcitx5, if there is anything that depends on these, it will tell you and list them as additional packages to remove - and you can always stop there and then.

After you remove the manually installed packages, you should always run sudo apt autoremove --purge to remove the automatically installed packages.

5

i thought this thread was about this thing in the system tray (new in 24.04) that i don’t know what it does, or why i can’t disable it in the config settings.

Screenshot_20240702_072206

if i remove the packages in this thread, will that thing go away?

6

@skyfishgoo looks like yes, I had it earlier, just did the purge that @guss77 suggested, and rebooted, and it’s gone on my end! :tada:

Thanks @guss77 !

1 Like
7

great news.

did you also run autoremove, because when i run

sudo apt purge fcitx5-chinese-addons fcitx5-frontend-all fcitx5-material-color kde-config-fcitx5

i get this rather long list of packages

  fcitx5 fcitx5-chinese-addons-bin fcitx5-chinese-addons-data fcitx5-config-qt fcitx5-data fcitx5-frontend-gtk3 fcitx5-frontend-gtk4 fcitx5-frontend-qt5 fcitx5-frontend-qt6
  fcitx5-module-chttrans fcitx5-module-cloudpinyin fcitx5-module-fullwidth fcitx5-module-lua fcitx5-module-lua-common fcitx5-module-pinyinhelper fcitx5-module-punctuation
  fcitx5-modules fcitx5-pinyin fcitx5-pinyin-gui fcitx5-table libb2-1 libfcitx5-qt-data libfcitx5-qt1 libfcitx5-qt6-1 libfcitx5config6 libfcitx5core7 libfcitx5gclient2
  libfcitx5utils2 libime-bin libime-data libime-data-language-model libimecore0 libimepinyin0 libimetable0 liblua5.3-0 libmarisa0 libopencc-data libopencc1.1 libqt6core6t64
  libqt6dbus6t64 libqt6gui6t64 libqt6network6t64 libqt6opengl6t64 libqt6qml6 libqt6qmlmodels6 libqt6quick6 libqt6waylandclient6 libqt6waylandcompositor6
  libqt6waylandeglclienthwintegration6 libqt6waylandeglcompositorhwintegration6 libqt6widgets6t64 libqt6wlshellintegration6 libts0t64 libutempter0 libxcb-ewmh2 libxcb-imdkit1
  qt6-gtk-platformtheme qt6-qpa-plugins qt6-translations-l10n qt6-wayland

that will also be removed

8

You do not want to have these removed.

9

even if you are still on plasma 5?

would marking them as manual be a way to go?

sudo apt-mark manual [package]

10

Ah, ok. It’s probably fine if you’re not on 6