ibus won't turn 'on' when in certain programs

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I have installed "Linux Mint 13 KDE" as a virtual machine in VirtualBox.
ibus won't work on LM13 KDE also.

Also does not work in Kubuntu 12.04 (KDE with Ubuntu). Daemon operating correctly. Was working with XFWM4 window manager, but in KDE window manager ctrl-space has absolutely no effect, and the icon states no input window.

I can't get ibus to work at all in KDE anymore. Even with .bashrc edited with at the end:
export GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
export XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus
export QT_IM_MODULE=ibus

iBus is working 100% in xfce howeover. (Xubuntu).
Do the Kubuntu/KDE guys look at this? Can we add them in (like a project) or do we have to report the bug there (bugs.kde.org) and would that come under kimtoy? =S

OK this is weird.
All the above still holds true (I didn't change any other settings)

I stopped running scim.
Then I booted into a Xubuntu (XFCE) session, worked in it for a couple of days. (Interesting to note metacity kept trying to replace xfwm4 and X restarted like every 2 hours, xfwm4 had trouble --replacing metacity).

I rebooted into Kubuntu (KDE). Viola, ibus now works.
ヤッター!
Works in: firefox, konsole, libre writer/calc, kate (using anthy, also individual input settings for each application).

Did this get fixed with an update or something? Are people still experiencing the bug?

the same Problem in Kubuntu 12.04 64 bit

IBus in 12.04 and earlier versions lacks a dependency to "gnome-icon-theme", you may need to install it manually for Kubuntu.
sudo apt-get install gnome-icon-theme

im-switch should be the recommended way of enabling IBus, instead of manually change environmental variables.

Built-in Firefox should work. Changes are that you download Firefox from Mozilla which is 32bit. 32bit Firefox don't work automatically on a 64bit system because of some technical reasons.

LibreOffice works on my Kubuntu 12.04 64bit box currently.

Other random apps should be discussed case-by-case.

Issue also occurs with Libreoffice under KDE on Ubuntu Precise (32-bit PAE). IBus works for me in other programs, including Firefox.

I linked a Fedora bug in libreoffice-kde that seems to be the same issue.

Also likely the same issue: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IBus#LibreOffice

Quote:

If IBus does load but doesn't see LibreOffice as an input window, add this line to ~/.bashrc:
    export XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus
And then, you need to start ibus with "-xim -d", for example, add this line to ~/.xinitrc:
    ibus-daemon --xim -d
But the horrible thing is that you need to start LibreOffice in terminal.
If you're using KDE and the above doesn't work, install "libreoffice-gnome" and add this line to ~/.xprofile if you don't mind running LibreOffice in GTK2 mode:
    export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP="gnome"
That'll make IBus work with LibreOffice, and you can start LibreOffice from anywhere -- not just the terminal.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I have had tons of ibus issues with certain programs as well. Also, if others can confirm, additional problems are that the "menu" doesn't work (using a mouse) to switch input methods. The only consistent method is to use the keyboard shortcut.

BUT, I have solved all ibus problems (thanks to help from others) with some manual help, but need additional help from others to konw how to get these changes made known to the ubuntu devs.

     1. stock ibus for Ubuntu 12.04 (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". Same issues exist with the 12.10 ibus (different version, but still has the "ubuntu1" customization).

    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 (another colleague packaged these for me for 32 and 64 bit: if anyone would like these I would be happy to send them. so please let me know). Note that this new version will not show up in the system tray (notification area) by default, however, so either run this command:

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

    or do the same with dconf-editor.

In summary for this first issue, it is WHATEVER Ubuntu is customizing that is causing a great headache for ibus users. Stock ibus from Debian works much better!

    2. Setting ibus as the "keyboard input method" in Language Support will cause unexpected behavior (even with the updated version of ibus from above). Particuarly in some apps (a custom mono based one I use is one example), the window ids of the various windows windows will be confused by ibus, thus resulting in the inablity of ibus to work consistently (again, from the GUI menu). If ibus is started manually, these problems do not appear. Only when started through Language Support. The workaround is to keep Language Support keyboard input method to "none" and have a startup application that runs "ibus-daemon -xrd" on login (can either be user level or system level in /etc/xdg/autostart).

I am copying here a comment i made on bug 1023165

I think these problems are all possibly related, as I have done the 2 below things and now have ibus working 100% in all applications, using the GUI to switch input methods (don't have to rely on the keyboard shortcut which was confusing for some of my users)

Here is my comment from the above bug (please don't take this as spam: main point is there is something amiss with the ubuntu customized version of ibus that is solved by reverting to the debian version!):

==============================================

I have had tons of ibus issues with certain programs as well (mainly in 12.04 but confirmed same problems in 12.10 and I would assume 13.04 as well but I have not tested yet).

BUT, I have solved all ibus problems (thanks to help from others) with some manual help, but need additional help from others to konw how to get these changes made known to the ubuntu devs.

     1. stock ibus for Ubuntu 12.04 (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". Same issues exist with the 12.10 ibus (different version, but still has the "ubuntu1" customization).

    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 (another colleague packaged these for me for 32 and 64 bit: if anyone would like these I would be happy to send them. so please let me know). Note that this new version will not show up in the system tray (notification area) by default, however, so either run this command:

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

    or do the same with dconf-editor.

In summary for this first issue, it is WHATEVER Ubuntu is customizing that is causing a great headache for ibus users. Stock ibus from Debian works much better!

    2. Setting ibus as the "keyboard input method" in Language Support will cause unexpected behavior (even with the updated version of ibus from above). Particuarly in some apps (a custom mono based one I use is one example), the window ids of the various windows windows will be confused by ibus, thus resulting in the inablity of ibus to work consistently (again, from the GUI menu). If ibus is started manually, these problems do not appear. Only when started through Language Support. The workaround is to keep Language Support keyboard input method to "none" and have a startup application that runs "ibus-daemon -xrd" on login (can either be user level or system level in /etc/xdg/autostart).

same issue here on 12.04 ... very broken and reliability problems also.

On one account (which has 'sudo' power) through NX Client, I must launch by hand the command : "ibus-daemon -xrd" (and after the session has loaded !?, this doesn't work in the startup application...) to get the input methods that I've configured to appears in the notification icon menu, otherwise, the icon is there, but no method are displayed in the menu...

On a simple user account through LTSP, this doesn't work, and I'm unable to type japanese: no input method appears in the menu of the icon found in the notification area. I've looked into various solution on the web without success (including all what is mentionned in this thread.)

And it worked flawlessly in 12.10 (by chance ?) on my desktop computer.

I would be happy to get the debian-sid packages mentionned by Andy Iverson (for 64bit)

Closing as wontfix in LibreOffice. Comments #13 and #14 suggest this is really a bug in the Ubuntu patches on top of ibus on 12.04/12.10, so not investigating any further for LibreOffice. Anyone interested in getting this in 12.04 should propose to target this in ibus (ubuntu) against the 12.04 series.

Sorry for the double post above in comments 12 and 13. Björn is correct this does NOT seem LibreOffice related.

I have since clarified that problem 2 from comment #13 above is not valid, and was related to the specific application we were using.

So, in summary, there does NOT seem to be any issue with setting ibus as the "keyboard input method" in Language Support.

But, problem 1 from comment #13 above regarding needing to use the Debian versions of ibus instead of the patched Ubuntu versions remains valid and true for Precise, Oneiric, and I am assuming others. Whatever is in the ubuntu patched version BREAKS gui use of ibus!

I have re-packaged ibus from debian in my ppa, so anyone wanting to confirm it solves their problems is welcome to try the packages from the ppa (if you add the ppa, on next dist-upgrade it should pull them in automatically):

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

I have also applied this comment to the related ibus bug 1023165

I hope that this comment helps someone else, but I was having similar problems with ibus while using Firefox. Although I could input text using ibus, I could not right-click or access any of the menus (File, Edit, etc) while ibus was active.

I tried reinstalling ibus and changing the input method in the language settings, but the problem remained. However, when I installed the re-packaged ibus in the ~wasta-linux ppa as mentioned by Rik Shaw, ibus works perfectly with Firefox now. Thank you.

I am running Linux Mint 13 (maya) 64-bit and Firefox 31.0.

Feel free to move this comment if it seems that it is in the wrong place, as I am fairly new to posting.

Ubuntu 14.10 ibus

I can not "turn on" chinese pinyin.

/usr/share/im-config/data/21_ibus.rc:
set "GTK_IM_MODULE" to "xim" not "ibus", because of lacking of "gtk-2.0"("libgtk2.0-0") when after install the Ubuntu 14.10.

So, I can resolve my trouble by installing ibus-gtk(auto install libgtk2.0-0).

I can see this issue is still alive. So I'm one more person that is affected. I use Kubuntu 14.04 with KDE 4.13.3; Qt 4.8.6. libgtk is also installed. And it does the same as it was described in the beginning: IBus with anthy input works flawlessly with native KDE applications [Calligra, Rekonq/Konqueror, Kiten and console] but magically disappears when trying to input something in LibreOffice or Firefox/Opera.

OK, I noticed it doesn't disappear completely: when I blind type a word and press space to convert it to kanji, the usual candidate choice dialog window appears - but no output in the program window itself.

Ibus doesn't crash, doesn't complain about missing libs as well. If anyone has any idea about solving this problem, I'd be more than grateful.

Look like this problem exist for long time. But as far as I remember last LTS 12.04 ibus does not behavior like this. It change when I use the shortcut key.

I can confirm the Ibus-daemon is working. When I use my shortcut key "CTRL + space", I can see the input change from English to Chinese in the daemon at panel (in my case). But when I type, it still show english. I can only type Chinese if I switch it using mouse.

I also observe 1 problem. The ibus will stick to the input of previous shutdown. If I used Chinese in my previous shutdown, the next time, it will keep showing Chinese. Even I switch it, it still show Chinese in the next program. The only solution is restart the ibus-daemon.

So bad, don't have other better input method.

I still like the old version of SCIM input at 8.04. So bad the

C'mon, why is it so hard for this program to just change the input language?!

In any program the cursor may be, I have to click one or more times in the ibus icon and in the chosen language (off/chinese-pinyin), the number of times used to be 1, 2 or 3 (until the icon changes), now seems to be more randomic, including > the number of times I wanna try. That's really a pain in the ass!

That's probably not the place, but it could (once this is fixed), also have the option to remember the language for different windows/text fields... this would speed up things a lot!

Thanks!

I can confirm that this does not work in ubuntu mate 16.04 with a custom keyboard (see http://www.ubuntu4u.com/howtos/how-to-type-romanized-pali-and-sanskrit-in-ubuntu-12041210)
It works in terminal only. Burmese seems to work. The preferences for that particular setting does not work. (no dialog shows up)