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HOWTO: Using Keyman for Linux with KDE

HOWTO: Using Keyman for Linux with KDE

Unfortunately when using the KDE desktop environment, the support for ibus (which Keyman for Linux uses underneath) isn’t that great.

Prequisites

As a prerequisite it is assumed that KDE Plasma, Wayland, and sddm are installed and working. This is the base for the steps described below. The steps may be appropriate for other configurations, too.

Installation and Configuration Steps

If you want to use Keyman with KDE you’ll have to do some manual steps.

Step 1 Install Keyman package

In a terminal window, run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install keyman

If not installed, this command installs the ibus package.

This is just an example for the apt package manager, on an other Linux platform there may be a different package manager and different package names.

Step 2 Provide the environment variables required for the ibus input method framework

The environment variables "GTK_IM_MODULE" and "QT_IM_MODULE" must be set to "ibus"; "XMODIFIERS" to "@im=ibus".

This can be achieved by setting them in the /etc/environment file or by putting a file containing the environment variables into the directory $HOME/.config/environment.d.

The format in both files is:

GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus
QT_IM_MODULE=ibus

Step 3 Auto-start the ibus daemon on every login

This can be achieved by providing a file ending with .desktop in the directory $HOME/.config/autostart.

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=<some directory path>/ibus-start.sh
Icon=application-x-shellscript
Name=ibus-start
Type=Application
X-KDE-AutostartScript=true

The content of the ibus-start.sh file is:

#!/bin/bash
ibus-daemon -dxrn kde

This may lead to an IBus Notification message box after logging in.

IBus should be called from the desktop session in Wayland. For KDE, you can
launch 'systemsettings5' utility and go to "Input Devices"->"Virtual Keyboard" 
icon and select "Ibus Wayland" and click "Apply" button to configure Ibus in 
Wayland. (...)

One option is ignoring the IBus Notification. IBus will be working.

Another option is to follow the instructions in the IBus Notification. In this case the local autostart actions are no longer required. Therefore before you follow the instructions, remove the .desktop file described above. Because another autostart mechanism will be used.

Even then another IBus Notification box may appear.

Please unset QT_IM_MODULE and GTK_IM_MODULE environment variables and
'ibus-daemon --panel disable' should be executed as a child process of
ibus-ui-gtk3 component.

Warning

Please do not follow these instructions. Leave the QT_IM_MODULE and GTK_IM_MODULE environment variables set, otherwise some fonts won't be correctly displayed with Keyman.

Step 4 Reboot so that the changes you made get applied to the new session

Now you should be able to use Keyman for Linux and add and use Keyman keyboards.

Adding input methods to IBus

Keyman keyboards installed have to be added to IBus as Input Method (Launcher->"System"->"IBus Preferences->"Input Method").

NOTE: it seems that some KDE specific programs like Konsole aren’t designed to work with ibus/Keyman keyboards. To test if a Keyman keyboard works you can e.g. test with gedit or LibreOffice Writer.

References

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