How to set "compose key" on Mint 17 Cinnamon?

[ccyang]

I am trying to type accented characters from my US keyboard, but I cannot make the "compose key" working on my Mint 17 Cinnamon. I remember in earlier editions, I can set up my compose key in either "Regional Settings" or "Keyboard Shortcuts". However, this option no longer exists in Mint 17. I also tried "setxdbmap -option compose:ralt", but there is no effect.

Does anyone know how I can set up the compose key?

[xenopeek]

Keyboards > Keyboard layouts > Options

[ccyang]

Thanks for pointing this to me.

I now have ticked, for example, Right Alt or Right Win. But no matter I am typing in Chrome or Text Editor, I still cannot type accented characters. Am I missing something?

[xenopeek]

Is your keyboard layout one without dead keys? If so, for example é would be typed with compose+' and then e. If you have chosen a keyboard layout with dead keys, ' on its own doesn't do anything--you'll have to typed ' followed by space to make it appear. ' followed by e would type é. Test if you can typed ' with a single key press.

[ccyang]

My keyboard layout has been "English (US)". I see some other options like "English (US, international with dead keys)", but I don't know the differences.

With "English (US)" layout, when I type compose+', the ' already appears, so compose+', then e, gives me 'e.

[myrkat]

I have also noticed VERY SPOTTY compose key "acceptance" under KDE (Mint 17). I typically set my compose key to the scroll lock. It works in a few things (Kate, the note plasmoid widget thing, Dolphin file manager), but DOES NOT work in Skype, Chrome, Firefox, etc. LibreOffice (and OpenOffice) have had issues with compose for some time, and compose does not work in them for me, either.

It is frustrating, as I seemed to have little or no problems under Kubuntu 14.04, Mint 16 Xfce and others. Seems something new...

No more Çråz¥ Ŧéxţ for me... unless I do it on the note plasmoid and paste it in (like that).

[myrkat]

Just an UPDATE:

I believe I have found a work-around to my issues with Compose Key.

From THIS POST (a few years ago), I saw one user do a

Code: Select all

sudo im-switch -s none

followed by a

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install ibus

Risking it all, I did the same on my Mint 17 KDE setup. I had to get im-switch first via sudo apt-get install, then set it to none; next I installed ibus (which I thought would be installed, but it wasn't). Once all that was done, I rebooted, logged in and then voila! I tested it in Skype, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and it worked. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work in Chrome, but there is a known bug about that. Heck, I can even type it in World of Warcraft (running under Wine) like I used to... which is nice since most of my characters have accented letters!

When I echo $XMODIFIERS I get a blank (where I used to get "@im=ibus" or something). Not sure what happened or why, but it is working (for now?) at least.

[MikZ]

From THIS POST (a few years ago), I saw one user do a

Code: Select all

sudo im-switch -s none

followed by a

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install ibus

Risking it all, I did the same on my Mint 17 KDE setup. I had to get im-switch first via sudo apt-get install, then set it to none; next I installed ibus (which I thought would be installed, but it wasn't). Once all that was done, I rebooted, logged in and then voila! I tested it in Skype, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and it worked. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work in Chrome, but there is a known bug about that. Heck, I can even type it in World of Warcraft (running under Wine) like I used to... which is nice since most of my characters have accented letters!

This solved a similar problem with my Gnome 3 system. My compose key worked for years, under Ubuntu, Mint 12, Mint 14 and Mint 17, but it stopped working when I upgraded to 17.2. However, these steps and rebooting fixed it for me, even though I got an error when I tried im-switch. (It complained about my locale, en_AU—but it didn't seem to matter.) BTW, I had to install im-switch, simply with:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install im-switch

.

When I echo $XMODIFIERS I get a blank (where I used to get "@im=ibus" or something). Not sure what happened or why, but it is working (for now?) at least.

Again, me too. Before I followed the steps above, $XMODIFIERS was @im=ibus, and now it's unset. I can only guess that the $XMODIFIERS variable was the culprit, and that installing ibus fixed it.

Thanks!