Features/GNOMEIBusIntegration

GNOME IBus Integration

Summary

The goal is to integrate ibus into gnome-shell and a gnome-shell indicator provides both keyboard and input method menu. This feature involves GNOME3 desktop.

Owner

• Name: Takao Fujiwara, Rui Matos
• Email: tfujiwar@redhat.com

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 18
• Last updated: 2012-07-17
• Percentage of completion: 40%

The bulk of the integration patches have been merged upstream for GNOME 3.5.4, and will appear in rawhide sometime this week. See http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointFive/Features/IBus for more detailed status.

Detailed Description

The ibus UI for gnome-shell has been provided as ibus-gnome3 package since Fedora 16 and now is the time to integrate the ibus UI into gnome-shell.

Benefit to Fedora

Currently ibus-gnome3 package is not enabled by default and users need to enable the ibus indicator by manual in Fedora 17. When the ibus integration is done in gnome-shell, the ibus indicator will be available without users' operation.

Scope

gnome-shell provides the ibus menu by default. ibus does not run ibus panel on gnome-shell. gnome-control-center provides ibus configuration. gnome-settings-daemon launches ibus-daemon and switches engines.

FIXMEs:

• hotkey handling (locale based?)
• default IMEs

How To Test

Install IBus and some engines, eg ibus-anthy.

Open gnome-control-center, region panel, input sources tab. Use the + button and add Anthy to the list of active input sources.

Verify that Anthy is now listed in the gnome-shell keyboard menu and can be activated from there.

Test that using Anthy to enter Japanese text works in gedit, firefox, and in gnome-shell itself, e.g. in the search entry.

Test that switching between keyboard layouts such as en_Us and input methods such as anthy works using both the shell menu and keyboard shortcuts.

Verify that the keyboard shortcuts can be changed in the control-center panel.

User Experience

gnome-shell shows ibus indicator is available by default. gnome-control-center shows ibus configurations by default.

Dependencies

See https://live.gnome.org/ThreePointFive/Features/IBus

• gnome-shell depends on ibus libraries
• gnome-control-center depends on ibus libraries
• ibus-setup won't be accessible from GUI in gnome-shell, but input methods will be configurable from the control-center

Q: so can you clarify in our feature page, what features are approved/agreed to include in 3.6 and what features are proposed but not yet approved/agreed?
A: Currently approved patches are gnome-shell and switching engines by g-s-d. Running ibus-daemon and g-c-c is under the review.

Q: which features of the above contains ibus-setup replacement say?
A: g-c-c.

Q: When gnome-settings-daemon is implemented to run ibus-daemon

• if imsettings disables to run ibus-daemon
• im-chooser can be run by users
• if any UIs provide the option to disable ibus-daemon
• if ibus-daemon runs on any locales
• if ibus-daemon runs without ibus engines
• if imsettings needs to be run to export QT_IM_MODULE and XMODIFIERS
  

A: As of 3.5.4, gnome-settings-daemon will only activate ibus-daemon when needed - ie when the list of active input sources contains input methods requiring IBus. If you don't want ibus-daemon to run, you can just not add any such input sources to the list. Or you can uninstall ibus-daemon. Users can run im-chooser if they want to, but it will probably interfere with the Input Sources UI in the control-center.

Contingency Plan

ibus panel is back and enables ibus-daemon does not connect to gnome-settings-daemon.

Documentation

ibus-xkb is also integrated for non-GNOME desktop newly. ibus-xkb provides preloaded engines, all XKB layout, variant ibus engines, frequently used input method list on ibus-setup, customizable trigger key on ibus-setup.

Release Notes

• IBus menu is now available on GNOME3 desktop if IBus is enabled.

Comments and Discussion

• See Talk:Features/GNOMEIBusIntegration