Ibus doesn't work

[sid...@yahoo.com]

Hello all, 

I need help for my installation of IBus, an input method, to type in Vietnamese, I got it installed, it is present in the task bar of my LXDE, i can do everything but activating it. I unsinstalled and reinstalled it several times, the problem persists. 
I am running ubuntu 13.04 on a Dell vostro 1501 laptop.

[Rik Shaw]

In my experience, Ubuntu BREAKS IBus in *exactly* the ways that you are describing.  When I have used the *upstream Debian packages* of ibus, these problems do not exist.  I suggest that the ibus developers get ahold of the Ubuntu guys and tell them to quit breaking their stuff!!!!!

[Takao Fujiwara]

I don't understand your problem.
If you indicate ibus property panel, ibus-setup can control the appearance.

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[Rik Shaw]

I don't understand your problem.
If you indicate ibus property panel, ibus-setup can control the appearance.

The problem is with Ubuntu (any version), mainly (?) with "NON Unity" desktops.  The problem has to do with ibus getting confused as to what the active input method is for each window, when many windows are open.  In Ubuntu 12.04 it was really bad.  Basically by using a mouse only to change input methods, the correct one would show in the panel, but it would NOT be the correct one in typing in the window.  See this:

http://linux.lsdev.sil.org/wiki/index.php/Talk:Installing_KMFL_on_Ubuntu

Especially this part:

Ubuntu 12.04 / Mint 13 has issues with ibus that affect the functionality of kmfl, which can be solved with a bit of tinkering.

In short, stock ibus (version 1.4.1-3ubuntu1) has several difficulties when using the system tray icon GUI to enable or disable keyboards. Sometimes it is not turned on properly even though the icon changes, sometimes it says "no input window" when there is indeed one, and other times it simply seems unresponsive: turning on the keyboard does nothing. This seems across "almost all applications"

Upstream versions of ibus from Debian Sid (version 1.4.1-7) solve all of these problems, and ibus seems to work very very well from the GUI menu with this update. I have packaged these versions and made them available in the main wasta-Linux ppa [1] Note that this new version will not show up in the Unity system tray (notification area) by default, however, so if you use Unity you will need to either run this command:

gsettings set desktop.unity.panel systray-whitelist "['all']"

or do the same with dconf-editor.

 
Also see these bugs:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ibus/+bug/1007423

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ibus/+bug/1023165

In ALL cases, if I replace the Ubuntu specific version of IBus with the upstream Debian version, all problems go away.  So it is my opinion that something in the Ubuntu patches breaks ibus.  I have tried to contact the Ubuntu people on this, and contribute to the above bug reports, but still a problem.

[Takao Fujiwara]

OK, thanks for your explanation.
I don't remember the issues with 1.4 but there might be several
internal patches.
Current my suggestion is to use 1.5.

[Rik Shaw]

Fujiwara,

in Ubuntu 12.04, my re-packaged ibus 1.4 is working well (it is too many dependency headaches to get ibus 1.5 working there).  For Ubuntu 14.04, I now have ibus 1.5.9 packaged, and it is working quite well.  FYI, my packages are here:

https://launchpad.net/~wasta-linux/+archive/ubuntu/wasta