Typing Asian characters

[MoreEbooks]

I am using the 'fcitx' Input Method mechanism on Debian Linux. But the Calibre EPUB Editor seems to ignore it and thus I can not type in Asian characters. Other programs on the same machine, such as LibreOffice and emacs, work fine with fcitx. Is there something I have to do so that Calibre will listen to fcitx?

[kovidgoyal]

Presumably your fcitx Qt plugin is incompatible with the Qt version shipped with calibre, use your distro packaged calibre and it should work.

[MoreEbooks]

That sounds like a reasonable explanation. I have another computer, a laptop, running the same version of Debian (12) and the same version of Qt (6.4.2) and fcitx (1.4.2.9) but still has the distro version of calibre (6.13) and it works with fcitx correctly. On the system where it does not work has calibre 7.15. The 7.15 got installed by me running the calibre upgrade procedure as linked to by the usual "An upgrade is available" notification from calibre. That is probably how I got into this condition.

Ok, then how I do I roll back the 7.15 calibre to 6.13? Presumably the database schemas are different. The APT package manager on the 7.15 system seems to think that 6.13 is still installed though when I run calibre it is 7.15.

[kovidgoyal]

update debian there's no reliable way to go backwards between major calibre versions.

[Quoth]

Also check if ibus is installed and working? I found that without it most QT using programs, inc Calibre Editor, would ignore the Compose key. It seems to also have Asian input schemes.

I'm using Linux Mint 21.3 with Mate Desktop, which is vaguely related to Ubuntu and Debian (I've used both of those in the past).

[MoreEbooks]

fcitx uses dbus, not ibus. And in any case, programs like LibreOffice work fine. Over on my laptop running calibre 6.13, ibus is also not running and dbus is, and the older calibre is working fine.

I have upgraded my system with the calibre 7.15 from Debian 12.5 to 12.6, the latest available version. The problem remains. It looks like running the calibre upgrade procedure (that the program points you to) is a bad idea. Just go with the distro versions to make sure calibre is not getting ahead of itself.

Now I can't clone my calibre collections from one computer to the other because the database versions are incompatible.

[MoreEbooks]

Unless the calibre "export" function, that creates some ".calibre-data" files, works backwards across versions. I really do not want to lose all my annotations.

[MoreEbooks]

Update: it doesn't.

[MoreEbooks]

Resolution: I uninstalled calibre 7.15 and deleted all the library directories. Then I installed the distro version, 6.13, and copied over all the directories from the other computer where the fcitx integration was working. Luckily I had cloned that from the first computer shortly before doing the upgrade to 7.15 so I do not think I lost anything.

Now I can type the Chinese characters again. Going forward, I will ignore calibre telling me that a new version is available and will just use what the distro offers.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by MoreEbooks

fcitx uses dbus, not ibus. And in any case, programs like LibreOffice work fine. Over on my laptop running calibre 6.13, ibus is also not running and dbus is, and the older calibre is working fine.

I was using dbus, but Compose didn't work in KATE or Calibre Editor or Viber, so I installed and changed to ibus.

[MoreEbooks]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I was using dbus, but Compose didn't work in KATE or Calibre Editor or Viber, so I installed and changed to ibus.

That is odd because Compose works fine for me. (fcitx, xfce4) I have it set to use the Windows key. These IME things seem very fragile.

[Quoth]

I use Caps Lock (also need to disable Caps lock) and use Windows key as modifier to drag a window with mouse.

I guess Mate is different from XFCE (which I have as an alternate).

LO Writer was fine. it was mostly QT based programs that needed ibus