#1112639 im-config: Review hardcoded IBUS_ENABLE_SYNC_MODE=0 Setting in 21_ibus.rc

#1112639#5
Date:
2025-08-31 13:30:50 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

Please review the forced setting of IBUS_ENABLE_SYNC_MODE to 0,
introduced in
https://salsa.debian.org/input-method-team/im-config/-/commit/a629ef78f581d006499eaee633c4c98bc16e07fb

It appears that the default setting, per ibus design, should be 1.

Setting the value to 0 causes reproducable issues with some Java applications,
that are hard to trace back to this (apparently workaround) setting, as outlined here:
https://github.com/ibus/ibus/issues/2620

and also here:

https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/discussions/problems/89640-moneydance-stops-responding-to-a-keyboard#comment_62390852

There may be additional Java applications suffering from issue with this,
left unreported because of the obscurity of the relationship.

The original reason for for this setting, issues with some Asian languages,
are several years old and may be fixed by now.
The hardcoded Debian setting (which seems more a temporary workaround, rather than
a true root-cause fix) does not allow the user or admin to change it without
editing the package-distributed file at

/usr/share/im-config/data/21_ibus.rc

I have verified, that the complete stop of responding to keyboard inputs
by the Moneydance application goes away when changing 21_ibus.rc
to launch /usr/bin/ibus-daemon without setting IBUS_ENABLE_SYNC_MODE
(reverting Commit a629ef78).


Thanks!

	Jens