Bug 417161

Summary: compose keys do not work under wayland QT
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Johann Höchtl <johann.hoechtl>
Component: generic-waylandAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: benjamin.port, butirsky, meven.car, nate, plasma-bugs-null, thaddee.tyl
Priority: NOR Keywords: wayland-only
Version First Reported In: 5.17.5   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
See Also: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=411729
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Johann Höchtl 2020-02-04 19:32:42 UTC 
SUMMARY
compose keys do not work

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. German keyboard, open any QT application enter ´e

OBSERVED RESULT
1. only e is displayed


EXPECTED RESULT
é is printed

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma:
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.17.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.66.0
Qt Version: 5.14.0

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Does work in GTK-applications, eg. firefox

Does work if the following is entererd into /etc/environment
INPUT_METHOD=ibus
GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
QT_IM_MODULE=ibus
XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus

(none of the lines above are required for Wayland GTK-Apps to work)
Comment 1 Benjamin Port 2020-05-11 09:14:14 UTC 
Bug is not reproducible with
KDE plasma and framework from master
Qt: 5.14.2
Comment 2 Thaddee Tyl 2025-11-29 14:57:46 UTC 
I had this exact issue, and I think I know why it was not reproducible, which is why I write this in case someone else comes over this issue as well.

Back in the X11 days, I relied on /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose for compose key combinations.

At some point, a KDE upgrade migrated me to Wayland, and the compose key combinations that I was used to, ceased to work.

The reason? Wayland KDE reads $HOME/.XCompose, not /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose, which contains way more key combinations.

The workaround?
cat /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose >>~/.XCompose

That said, my personal preference is to convert the greek combos to explicit compose key combinations (eg. Compose+g+a for α):
</usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose sed 's/^<dead_greek>/<Multi_key> <g>/' | grep '^<Multi_key>' >~/.XCompose