Cant type unicode in emacs any more

[Rusi]

For some time now I have this in my X startup programs:
$ setxkbmap -option compose:menu

After this I can type (in mostly any window) for example:
(with MN being the windows-menu key)
MN.. gives ... ie an ellipses
MN--. gives - ie an en dash
MN--- gives -- ie an em dash
Not to mention all the e" giving ë
etc etc - all the unicode goodies at
/usr/share/X11/locale/$LANG/Compose


Now suddenly its stopped working.
ie it works in most other X apps but not in emacs

I thought there may be a race-condition between the setxkb and emacs
which are both in my startup programs.
So I ran the setxkb command by hand from a shell and (re)started emacs
from the shell

No luck:
The compose works outside emacs
Doesn't work inside

Any clues?

Its the same for emacs 23 and 24

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Many of us have had to start emacs with the XMODIFIERS environment
variable *unset* for quite some time, to make this work:

/usr/bin/env -u XMODIFIERS /usr/bin/emacs

If I recall correctly, the emacs developers have caught this and fixed
it (?) in the development trunk, but I wouldn't be surprised if that
hasn't made its way to any releases yet. Why you've only bumped into
this recently I can't say, though again I have a feeling that one of the
linux distros updated not too long ago in a way that exposed this bug.
Anyhow, try unsetting the environment variable and see if that's it...

E

[Rusi]

On Tuesday, April 29, 2014 6:14:45 PM UTC+5:30, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:

No that did not work

However Ive found what made it stop working:
I had created a .XCompose file containing the one line
<Multi_key> <less> <bar> : "↵" U21B5

No I am not very addicted to the ↵ character -- just trying out how easy
it is to add one's own compose-sequences

Removing the .XCompose file makes it work again.

This of course raises more questions than it answers:
Minor: If its a bug/inconsistency then in whom
Significant: I thought X was one (or more) levels below emacs.
Why is emacs (effectively) looking into .XCompose?
Because currently the behavior I am seeing is:

- Other apps *add* contents of .XCompose to the builtin composeables
- Emacs *replaces* builtins with .XCompose

[Stefan Monnier]

> Why is emacs (effectively) looking into .XCompose?

Probably a bug somewhere.

> Because currently the behavior I am seeing is:
> - Other apps *add* contents of .XCompose to the builtin composeables
> - Emacs *replaces* builtins with .XCompose

Please report it via M-x report-emacs-bug. But we fixed a problem in
this area since the last release, so please try it with the
24.3.90 pretest, in case the problem is already solved.


Stefan

[Rusi]

Now with emacs 24.3.1 on ubuntu 14.10
and now its not working at all.

Just for context
Earlier after
$ setxkbmap -variant altgr-intl -option compose:menu

I could use compose sequences.
However it would stop working in emacs if there was a ~/.Xcompose file

Now compose is not working in emacs at all -- with or without file -- and its
working elsewhere - shell, python-idle etc

[Rusi]

Just checked the Eric's unsetting XMODIFIERS method above worked

[Rusi]

And then it stopped working

And then followed http://askubuntu.com/questions/410499/make-setxkbmap-preferences-being-set-at-startup
Go down to org -> desktop -> desktop -> input-sources
And make xkb-options have value
['compose:menu']
And now its working again

[Rusi]

The need to unset XMODIFIERS is completely erratic
Sometimes needed, sometimes not.