#607673 Left/right arrow and backspace key don't work in account register when using X Input Method (XIM)

Package:
gnucash
Source:
gnucash
Description:
personal and small-business financial-accounting software
Submitter:
Shannon Dealy
Date:
2021-09-27 17:21:07 UTC
Severity:
important
Tags:
#607673#5
Date:
2010-12-20 22:15:33 UTC
From:
To:
I just upgraded my system to squeeze and in gnucash I am no longer able to use
the left-arrow, right-arrow, or backspace keys to edit transactions or register
entries.  Other keys that I don't normally use for editing may be broken as
well.  Up-arrow and down-arrow keys work as expected for scrolling through the
register.

These keys all work in every dialog box of gnucash that I have tried and all
other applications that I am using, just the main register and the scheduled
transaction editor windows where checks and other transactions are entered
or modified has the problem of them being non-functional.  This is a major
problem for data entry as the only way I have found to correct an error is to
delete the transaction and re-enter it from scratch.

As I found it hard to believe that a problem like this would not have been
noticed already by others, I have tried:

   starting the program after deleting my .gnucash directory

   purging/reinstalling gnucash (which caused about 20 other packages to
   also be removed/reinstalled)

   rebooting the system

assuming that it might be caused by some form of local corruption of my
system, none of these had any effect.

#607673#14
Date:
2010-12-21 16:35:36 UTC
From:
To:
severity 607673 serious
tags 607673 + moreinfo help
thanks

Hi Shannon,

thank you for your feedback on the Debian package for Gnucash.

Unfortunately I was not able to reproduce the mis-behaviour you described.
I have no problems to use the left arrow or right arrow keys when editing a
transaction.

The issue might somehow be related to the fix for Debian Bug #587298, which was
introduced in gnucash 2.2.9-6 to fix broken SCIM input methods. Can you please
re-triage your bug with a package built without the patch
10_fix_broken_SCIM_input_bug_587298? To do this you would need to download and
unpack the most recent source package of gnucash, remove the mentioned patch
from debian/patches/00list and build the package. Does the problem persist with
the resulting packages installed?

Regards,
Micha

#607673#19
Date:
2010-12-21 19:01:30 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Micha,

Your idea that it was SCIM related was correct, however, it wasn't the
patch that is the problem.

I tried rebuilding and installing gnucash as you suggested without the
"10_fix_broken_SCIM_input_bug_587298" patch and it had no effect.
However, I do run with SCIM installed (for use with other programs), and
terminating it allowed both versions of gnucash to start working
correctly (with and without the above patch).  Restart the background
daemon and gnucash immediately stops working correctly.

So the problem would appear to be SCIM related, but (not knowing the
internals of gnucash), I do find it puzzling that the problem only
affects transaction editing (register and scheduled transactions), but not
any other dialogs that I have tried.  I would have expected that all
keyboard input to the program would behave the same.

Regards,

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy@deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
Phone: (800) 467-5820 |          - Natural Building Instruction -
    or: (541) 929-4089 |                  www.deatech.com

#607673#28
Date:
2010-12-22 14:24:12 UTC
From:
To:
severity 607673 important
tags 607673 - moreinfo help
thanks

Hi Shannon,

Am 21.12.2010 20:01, schrieb Shannon Dealy:

Good to hear, then it is at least no regression (caused by this patch).

Then, we have a workaround. Hence I don't believe anymore that this bug
is release critical, so I am lowering the severity again.

I think we should re-check the issue with latest stable upstream version
Gnucash 2.4.0, which has been released some days ago. I hope I get
around to craft some experimental packages for this release soon...

Regards,
Micha

#607673#33
Date:
2011-01-24 22:54:02 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Shannon,

You wrote:

I replied:

Gnucash 2.4.0 is now available in experimental. This new upstream
version can be considered rather stable, but was not uploaded to
experimental due to the freeze for Debian Squeeze. Would you mind to
install the package from experimental and try-out whether your problem
persists?

You can do so by adding following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

   deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian experimental main

An "aptitude update" should not automatically install versions from
experimental, but you can then selectively install packages (ie.
gnucash) and all its dependencies from experimental:

   aptitude install -t experimental gnucash

The current version 1:2.4.0-3 of the gnucash package should install
fine, even on a Squeeze system.

Regards,
Micha

#607673#38
Date:
2011-01-27 21:56:53 UTC
From:
To:
[snip]

No change.  Installed gnucash from experimental and still can't edit the
register (left/right arrows and backspace key) as long as SCIM is running
(even though it is not active).  Terminate the SCIM daemon and immediately
register editing works correctly, restart the daemon and editing is broken
again.  This worked fine in Lenny, just not in squeeze or the current
experimental.  So far I have not seen this problem with any other program,
so it still appears that gnucash is the problem

Regards,

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy@deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
Phone: (800) 467-5820 |          - Natural Building Instruction -
    or: (541) 929-4089 |                  www.deatech.com

#607673#43
Date:
2011-06-28 07:08:47 UTC
From:
To:
Was changing window managers and discovered that the problem with gnucash
and the scim daemon on my system is specific to the setting of
GTK_IM_MODULE.  If it is set to "xim" gnucash editing is broken (arrows,
delete/backspace), if it is set to "scim" then it appears to work fine.

My understanding is that scim is supposed to be able to work with xim (and
it apparently does for my other apps), though I don't recall why I set it
up this way years ago as it does not appear to be necessary for my current
usage.  In any case, switching so:

    GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"

appears to solve my problem, though the bug is still there, this appears
to make it a non-issue for me.  Perhaps this may give some clues to make
it easier to track down the problem.

FWIW.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy@deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
Phone: (800) 467-5820 |          - Natural Building Instruction -
    or: (541) 929-4089 |                  www.deatech.com

#607673#56
Date:
2011-10-16 15:34:42 UTC
From:
To:
tags 607673 + confirmed upstream
found 607673 1:2.4.7-3
retitle 607673 Left/right arrow and backspace key don't work in account register when using X Input Method (XIM)
forwarded 607673 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=661915
thanks

Shannon Dealy <dealy@deatech.com> writes:

I was able to reproduce your problem. I forwarded the bug to upstream
GnuCash developers.

As a reminder for myself, here are all the steps necessary to reproduce
the problem:

sudo apt-get install scim
mkdir -p ~/.scim
echo "/SupportedUnicodeLocales = $LANG" > ~/.scim/global
export XMODIFIERS="@im=SCIM"
export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim
killall scim-launcher
scim -d
gnucash

Then the backspace key and left/right arrows don't work in the account
register.

Thanks for reporting this,