Missing icon from KDE System Tray

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Tuesday 20 December 2011 04:35:44 Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 12/20/2011 02:25 AM, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> First, the cryptic stuff....  IBus means Intelligent Input Bus. It is an
> input framework for Linux.
> 
> To enable IBus on KDE, GNOME probably has a similar setting (I think it
> works OK in GNOME), using the classic tree style menu you go to
> "Settings" and pick "Input Method Selector".  From there you pick "Use
> IBus".  And you logout and log back in.

Ok, tried it and can confirm that the system tray icon is "empty". Other than 
that, the iBus appears to function correctly --- I can left-click on the 
nonexistent icon to select various input methods, I can right-click on it to 
get to the menu with preferences etc., and so on.

What I didn't manage to get working was to switch the input method using the 
default ctrl-space shortcut. But that shortcut is bad for me also because it 
interferes with Emacs mark-set, so I didn't even try to get it working.

In addition, under Gnome3 I can see a nice keyboard-like icon in the middle of 
the top bar, representing iBus, and functioning exactly like the "empty" icon 
in the KDE system tray. So my guess would be that the devs/packagers forgot to 
put an appropriate icon in the KDE icon-path.

I didn't try to configure input methods while in Gnome3, so I don't know 
whether the icon is supposed to change to reflect the current input method, or 
whether it was just supposed to be a nice little picture of the keyboard all 
the time (such an ingenious design --- where you are supposed to click to see 
the current input method --- would not be surprising for Gnome3).

All in all, it could be a good idea to file a bug against iBus for this thing.

Also, one question --- I use the ordinary KDE infrastructure for changing 
keyboard layouts (systemsettings -> input devices -> keyboard -> layouts), 
have configured the (otherwise useless) CapsLock to rotate among layouts, and 
the current layout is correctly represented in the system tray, using the 
default "keyboard layout" widget. Everything works perfectly. Can that be a 
viable alternative for you?

I don't write Chinese/Japanese/similar (yet), so I'm not sure how that would 
work...

HTH, :-)
Marko