Umlaut & accent typing bug after upgrading to Jessie

[sirabhorn]

After I upgraded to Jessie in 2015 from the previous version, I have encountered a typing bug which means that some characters related to non-English languages (at least é and ü) do not appear after pressing proper key combinations. They can always be copy-pasted from clipboard, however. I have an LXDE.

The appearance of the bug is either a bit random or at least has some sort of pattern that I have not discovered. The bug does not appear always but it appears very often. Probably during every session in a way or another. And when it appears, it concerns some programs but not all programs. For example, if I cannot write those characters in LibreOffice, Leafpad or LXTerminal, I may go to Firefox and write them there and copy-paste them to other programs. The bug does not always appear in a certain program and when it does, it may vanish after some time. Sometimes it actually looks like that the bug vanishes after I have pasted a desired character to a program in question. It is possible that it does not appear with Firefox or is less common there when compared to terminal and typing programs. I am not sure if it appears in every program or just in some.

I have a Scandinavian keyboard layout and letters ö and ä have not been problematic. Only those letters which require more than one key press are associated to the bug.

Have you encountered this bug before?

May you have ideas how to get rid of this bug? It is very annoying.

[pylkko]

Do you have keyboard-configuration installed?

You might try to reconfigure (dpkg-reconfigure)

Are you using many different keyboard layouts/locales on the same machine?

I think there is also a kernel parameter (keymap=de for example) that forces a certain keymap.

Can you show output of

Code: Select all

localectl

It sounds as if you have a settings file in LXDE that is loaded by some daemon and then at times in just crashes or restarts. Do you see any errors in the logs?

[debiman]

bug bug bug The bug bug bug this bug bug

i'm not a developer, but i always find it mildly insulting when everything that doesn't work as expected is called a 'bug'.
please be aware that the term 'software bug' has a precise definition.
read this:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questio ... 5691837744

apart from that i am of course willing to assist with this problem when the info requested by pylkko is provided.

[sirabhorn]

Do you have keyboard-configuration installed?

Now I do.

Are you using many different keyboard layouts/locales on the same machine?

No.

Can you show output of

Code: Select all

localectl

here:

Code: Select all

System Locale: LANG=en_SG.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_SG:en
VC Keymap: n/a
X11 Layout: fi
X11 Model: pc105

Having Singaporean English there is not intentional and the reason for that is unknown. I tried to follow instructions from here https://wiki.debian.org/ChangeLanguage ...but it seems to find nothing but en_SG.UTF-8 despite I tried for instance "en.UTF-8" which I think should refer to normal English.

It sounds as if you have a settings file in LXDE that is loaded by some daemon and then at times in just crashes or restarts. Do you see any errors in the logs?

/var/log/messages or system.log seems to contain no errors that would seem to be related to typing, keymaps etc.

user.log has at least something to associated with a string "daemon"

Code: Select all

Jan 12 22:04:24 diannao org.gtk.vfs.Daemon[1932]: ** (process:2291): WARNING **: send_infos_cb: No such interface 'org.gtk.vfs.Enumerator' on object at path /org/gtk/vfs/client/enumerator/1 (g-dbus-error-quark, 19)

[pylkko]

what system langauge do you want and what umlauts specifically do you need? do you want your language to be fi or en? should the system language be different from the keyboard map or is that also unintentional? and what desktop environment are you using? you may need to generate other locales to be able to choose them. post output of

Code: Select all

locale -a

you can try

Code: Select all

dpkg-reconfigure locales

[sirabhorn]

Okay, with "dpkg-reconfigure locales" I think I managed to change lang to en_IE.UTF8 while having fi-layout. Previously only en_SG locales were selected (though fi-layout seemed to be recognized as shown in the output of localectl). After first generating just fi-locales without en_IE, it complained that en_SG is not compatible with fi-locales (fi became a system language at this point), which may have caused problems. Then I selected en_IE-locales as well to set system language to en.

The issue with umlauts and accents not getting typed has not arrived yet, so there is a good chance that it is gone.

Thanks

[Caitlin]

I have a related issue -- would people mind if I asked my question here?

I have my locale set to English, but occasionally want to type in a German (or other language) word with umlauts or whatever. How would I do this with a multi-keypress combination? Currently, I'm using copy and paste or character map. I don't want to update the locale for just one word and then have to change it back again. I think there's an obvious solution but I just can't find it.

Caitlin

[sirabhorn]

Unfortunately my problem did not vanish. I still often cannot write é and ü and have no idea what I could do to fix it.

I have my locale set to English, but occasionally want to type in a German (or other language) word with umlauts or whatever. How would I do this with a multi-keypress combination? Currently, I'm using copy and paste or character map. I don't want to update the locale for just one word and then have to change it back again. I think there's an obvious solution but I just can't find it.

For every keyboard layout there should be certain key combinations for foreign characters (for instance I get ß by pressing Alt Gr + S). Unfortunately, there is some variation between different OSs. Perhaps try Google to find information

[pylkko]

The OS language and locale is not the same as the keyboard layout, you can change one and not change the other. As the Wiki says, the keyboard layout is stored in /etc/default/keyboard and you can either edit that file manually or use

Code: Select all

# dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
# systemctl restart keyboard-setup

Also:

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup

You can then change between keyboard with either a desktop tool or

Code: Select all

$ setxkbmap de
$ setxkbmap fr
$ setxkbmap us

https://wiki.debian.org/Keyboard

copy-pasting individual letters....

The locale is set by localctl.

Code: Select all

localectl set-locale LANG=locale

to set and to list all locales installed

Code: Select all

localectl list-locales

and to see what locale is is now in use and default

Code: Select all

localectl status

, be root to set the default locale

Code: Select all

# localectl set-locale LANG=en_GB.utf8

. I believe that if some locale setting is not set then the system will look in default. There is also a fall-back locale in locale.conf, so that if the one that has been set does not have a required word, then it is taken from the default.

I think that there may also be dekstop environment conf files that may override these. But that will be different in the different DE's.

[sirabhorn]

EDIT: Ok, I set "input method" from preferences menu not to set any input method and now accents and umlauts seem to be back. The input method thing may be something I used to use when I practiced Chinese and used Chinese typing. Now let's hope problems are gone for now...