[isabelle-dev] Problems with Fedora

[Christian Sternagel]

Dear Makarius,

On 10/01/2013 06:48 AM, Makarius wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Sep 2013, Makarius wrote:
> Doing some web search while trying, I've found suspicious problem
> reports like this:
>
>    iBus breaks keyboard input for java apps -- Feb 21, 2012
>    http://code.google.com/p/ibus/issues/detail?id=1417
>
> It seems that the environment variable XMODIFIERS controls such input
> methods. On my Xununtu it is unset, but on Fedora it refers to ibus.
>
> So if you still get the keyboard focus loss reliably,

I do.

> you can try the
> following in $ISABELLE_HOME_USERS/etc/settings:
>
>    unset XMODIFIERS
>
> or
>
>    XMODIFIERS=""

I did (the latter) and until now the result looks promising (i.e., no 
more keyboard focus loss.). I will report back later whether this first 
impression still holds. Thanks for finding this workaround!

>
> If that improves the situation, I could make this a factory default of
> Isabelle/jEdit on Linux.  We will see during several weeks of testing of
> release candidates if it works for most users, or causes other problems.

In principle that sounds good. I am only unsure what the implications of 
setting XMODIFIERS to "" are. (What I noticed on the spot was that with 
the above setting, when switching to Japanese (Anthy) with input mode 
"Hiragana" -- which should result in special Japanese Glyphs -- just 
plain ASCII was rendered; however, since those glyphs are only rendered 
as "black boxes" in Isabelle/jEdit with the default setting, this might 
not be a great loss).

cheers

chris