Writer: backspace, enter etc. not working after inserting dead-key chars

[johnword]

Version: 7.6.4.1 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 60(Build:1)
CPU threads: 20; OS: Linux 6.6; UI render: default; VCL: x11
Locale: es-ES (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Hello,

My window manager is i3 on X. My OS is Opensuse Tumbleweed. I found out that the backspace, Enter/Return, CTRL keys (and perhaps others) stop working right after inserting tildes (áéíóú letters). These are inserted with dead-keys (pressing the tilde key, then the character), it happens from the moment the dead-key is pressed. The keys start working again by unfocusing and refocusing the Writer tile/window (i.e. moving the mouse away and back to it).

I don’t use Writer often so I can’t say how long this has happened… everything should be default. Any tips are more than welcome.

[LeroyG]

And what about Calc?

No problem here:
Version: 7.6.2.1 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 60(Build:1)
CPU threads: 1; OS: Linux 5.14; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: es-MX (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

openSUSE Leap 15.4, Gnome 41.8, with Wayland.

[johnword]

Actually calc suffers the same issue!

[johnword]

The solution was that the system had XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus.

This makes dead-keys hang as above. This is related to comments in 71437 – Dead keys not working (workaround: comment 3 or comment 6 or comment 19 or comment 30 or comment 49), even though my issue doesn’t quite match the behaviour described.

In opensuse I had to edit /etc/sysconfig/language and set INPUT_METHOD="none". It was unset before and that must have somehow defaulted to ibus. This then makes XMODIFIERS=@im=local and things work. The ibus method should somehow be paired with an /etc/X11/xim.d/ibus script, but the xim.d folder doesn’t exist for me and I don’t know what provides it. I had an ibus daemon started with a XIM server (--xim), but it seems it just hanged. There are alternative input managers like fcitx5 which should probably work too.

I don’t know if this has broken something else, but things look fine so far.

[ramon_garcia]

You have to install the libreoffice-gnome package of your distribution

[ajlittoz]

I don’t think so: this will bring in all Gnome dependencies, including GUI. OP mentions i3 UI, consequently x11 interface package is the right one. And the issue was related to input method configuration. Changing UI without reconfiguring input conf would keep the same behaviour.

[ramon_garcia]

But the problem happens when one uses Libreoffice under Gnome without the libreoffice-gnome package. It is an issue between ibus input handler under Gnome (note the previous answers about disabling ibus via XMODIFIERS) and Libreoffice. I know because I had exactly the same problem.

Perhaps the package libreoffice-gtk3 is enough to fix the issue, I don’t know.

If one wishes to run Libreoffice under KDE one should install a package libreoffice-qt5 or libreoffice-qt6.

Best regards.

[ajlittoz]

Under Fedora, the packages for KDE Plasma are libreoffice-kf5 and …6.

[ramon_garcia]

Ok, I showed the package names under Ubuntu, assuming others would be similar.

[mikekaganski]

The qt and kf are different packages. Under Ubuntu, there are also kf packages; the qt packages are still experimental, and e.g. are built on Ubuntu, but AFAIK not on Fedora.