contains conflicting compose definitions

Hi hawke,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

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This is not a hardware bug; lspci and xorg.log is not necessary.

Alex, you misfiled this bug against libx11 instead of the correct package, xkeyboard-config.

How on earth was I supposed to know that?

$ dpkg -S /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose
libx11-data: /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose

wouldn't that be xkb-data anyway?

@Alex, please could you check if this issue is still affecting you under latest release included in Ubuntu Lucid? Thanks!

Summary

The reported problems largely still remain in Lucid.

The sequences <compose> <vowel> <minus | underscore | tilde>

give different results respectively from the sequences

<compose> <minus | underscore | tilde> <vowel>

with the former mostly containing inconsistencies, whilst the latter
are completely correct.

The problems mostly centre around the vowels a and o, but with tildes
the problem vowel is e.

Details

Here is the current position on my fully updated Ubuntu 10.04 LTS,
Gnome desktop, as run in a Bash terminal. All results are shown for
the key sequence

 <Compose><letter><minus | underscore | tilde>

except under item 7 below where the sequence is

 <Compose><minus | underscore | tilde><vowel>

1. Lower case vowels with minus:

 ā ē ī ō ū

These are now correct. Formerly a and o yielded tildes instead of
macrons.

2. Upper case vowels with minus:

 Ã Ē Ī Õ Ū

Capitals A and O are still wrong with tildes instead of macrons,
but see item 7 below.

3. Lower case vowels with underscore:

 ª ē ī º ū

Once again a and o are inconsistent, being superscripted with
underline, as opposed to macrons on e, i and u.

But once again, see item 7 below.

4. Upper case vowels with underscore:

 ª Ē Ī º Ū

The same inconsistency, with a and o appearing identically as for
lower case, but E, I and O with macrons.

But yet again, see item 7 below.

5. Lower case vowels with tilde:

 ã ĩ õ ũ

Here, there is no response at all for e, but the other vowels
correctly have tildes - but see item 7 below.

6. Upper case vowels with tilde:

 Ã Ĩ Õ Ũ

Again, no response at all for E, but the other vowels correctly appear
with tildes.

7. Additional observations.

a) I would have expected <compose> y | Y <minus> to yield macrons on
the semi-vowels y and Y, but the Japanese yen sign ¥, same for both
cases, results.

Likewise for <compose><minus><y | Y>, but

<compose><underscore><y | Y> does yield macrons on the y:

 ȳ Ȳ

b) <compose> <minus> <vowel> gives the same results as those shown
above.

c) <compose> <underscore> <vowel> gives *different* results from those
above:

 ā ē ī ō ū and Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū

Thus, all vowels are correctly given macrons.

d) <compose> <tilde> <vowel> gives *different* results from above:

 ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ and à Ẽ Ĩ Õ Ũ

which, once again is completely correct, with e and E now being
present and with tildes.

I hope all this helps to identify the problems.

Regards,

Gordon Oulsnam <email address hidden>

On Thu 01 Jul 2010 22:36:52 you wrote:
> @Alex, please could you check if this issue is still affecting you
> under latest release included in Ubuntu Lucid? Thanks!
>
> ** Changed in: xkeyboard-config (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Low
>
> ** Changed in: xkeyboard-config (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - libx11-data: contains conflicting compose definitions
> + contains conflicting compose definitions

Here are some comments that may help to fix this bug.
In this comment I am going to describe some issues on my Ubuntu 9.10 (GNOME)

1) Depending on the font size, vowels with tildes sometimes incorrectly appear on the screen as vowels with macrons. When increasing the font size with Ctrl-mousewheel, the apparent macron changes back and forth to tilde.
The fonts I have tried:
 - Nimbus Roman No9 L (in OpenOffice.org Writer)
 - Nimbus Sans L (in OpenOffice.org Writer)
 - Default web page fonts (in Firefox)
 - The Terminal

2a) Here is what I get when I am logged in as a user whose account was created during system installation:
<Compose> <minus> <vowel>: āēōūī ĀĒŌŪĪ
<Compose> <vowel> <minus>: āēōūī ĀĒŌūĪ
<Compose> <underscore> <vowel>: āēōūī ªĒºŪĪ
<Compose> <vowel> <underscore>: ªēºūī ªĒºūĪ
<Compose> <tilde> <vowel>: ãẽõũĩ ÃẼÕŨĨ

2b) Finally, this is what I get when I am logged in as a user whose account was added from "System">"Administration">"Users and Groups":
<Compose> <minus> <vowel>: ãēõūī ÃĒÕŪĪ
<Compose> <vowel> <minus>: ãēõūī ÃĒÕŪĪ
<Compose> <underscore> <vowel>: ªēºūī ªĒºŪĪ
<Compose> <vowel> <underscore>: ªēºūī ªĒºŪĪ
<Compose> <tilde> <vowel>: ãẽõũĩ ÃẼÕŨĨ
<Compose> <vowel> <tilde>: ãẽõũĩ ÃÕŨĨ
(<Compose>+"e"+<tilde> results in no symbol, just a sound)

What I find the most important, is that the key combination <Compose> <minus> <vowel> or <Compose> <vowel> <minus> should result in "a", "A", "o" and "O" with macrons, not tildes. This is a problem for which I do not see any good workaround.

I do not know why there are differences between 2a) and 2b)
In the instance of 2a, I used to install the Latvian(Latvia) keyboard layout, but I later removed it because it has a bug that has not been fixed yet. In the instance of 2b, I did not install the Latvian layout in the first place.
I use USA and Russian layouts.

P.S. My compose key is <Right Win>.

Thanks commenters in #7 and #8, that is a very good analysis of the problems. On my fairly pedestrian USA layout I'm able to reproduce the set of keys in 2a.

I'm not sure why 2b is different; possibly there are locale settings or console-setup settings at play? Check /etc/default/console-setup and setxkbmap -print. `xkbcomp :0 -w0 -` might be worth comparing between the two setups. I haven't been able to reproduce that case, although I do notice that under one font, ẽ (e with tilde) looks identical to ē (e with bar); could a font issue be at play? Maybe we should focus this bug report on the irregularity of 2a, and if you still can reproduce 2b, open a new bug report.

I'm also able to confirm that <Compose>+"e"+<tilde> produces nothing for me, although <Compose>+<tilde>+"e" does. I don't hear sound, but that's probably the system bell, which I have turned off. Looking through the Compose file I see there are some discrepencies in how ã and ẽ are defined.

Thank you, Bryce! In my opinion you have summarized the problem right.

I cannot check /etc/default/console-setup and setxkbmap -print, because I have changed my computer.

I think I have found out why there is a difference between 2a and 2b.
I suppose, the reason for a difference between 2a and 2b may be that different input methods are set for the different user accounts. The user account where I got 2a was configured to use scim-bridge, and 2b was configured with the default input method.

Having this information, can you reproduce 2b?

Maybe you will find it helpful to read how I solved this problem for myself. I just edited the compose key definitions. This is my thread on ubuntuforums.org
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1565339

All additional sequences from GNOME have recently been merges upstream with X.org From now one, please use only the compose key sequences as defined in
  http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libX11/log/nls/en_US.UTF-8/Compose.pre

Request for changes should be discussed on the X.org development list first before a patch is made since there are more constraints than meets the eye. Most of teh suggestions discussed above have been included already.

X.org has published a new release of Xlib, being 1.5 in which the above file has been finalized for that version.