Upgrade from scim to ibus leaves broken language selector

Binary package hint: language-selector

Ubuntu release : Karmic

In Karmic, scim is replaced by ibus for complex (simplified chinese) input.

Before the upgrade, complex input was handled by scim : in ~/.xinput.d, there was a symlink fr_FR -> /etc/xinput.d/scim (my system language is french but I often write with a chinese input method).

After the upgrade, I removed scim, then launched language-selector to switch to ibus. Problem is, this "fr_FR" symlink is now broken since scim is uninstalled, and language-selector fails to change it : selecting "ibus" from the complex input dropdown box doesn't change the symlink, and language-selector returns to its default "empty" complex input each time it's restarted. Another glitch is that language-selector still proposes me a "scim_xim" input method, because uninstalling scim left a /etc/xinput.d/scim_xim file that obviously shouldn't be there anymore.

Removing ~/.xinput.d and restarting language-selector made it work again (and I'm now an happy ibus user), but this is non-trivial for anybody not knowing a bit about XInput and all ...

A simple fix in language-selector would be to make it more robust by removing broken "fr_FR" (or any equivalent for other locales) symlink in ~/.xinput.d and replacing it with a new working symlink instead of silently fail.

Steps to reproduce the bug :
* create a bogus broken symlink "your_locale" in ~/.xinput.d (as any upgrade could leave behind)
* start language-selector
* watch how it doesn't update this symlink and resets itself each time it's restarted

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Dec 26 20:23:37 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-language-selector
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.6
Package: language-selector 0.4.18
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.53-generic
SourcePackage: language-selector
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic i686