OpenSUSE Leap 15.6 do not works correctly for us international keyboard and portuguese characteres

HI !

For long time I use " us international keyboard with dead keys" layout in Linux without any problem. It also works at OpenSUSE Tumbleweed but OpenSUSE Leap 15.6 refuse to work for the character cedila . Does anybody had this problem and know the solution? For others characters like à, á or ã it works.

This is from openSUSE Leap 15.6 with KDE. KDE says in System settings for Keyboard model: Generic | Generic 101-key PC. I have set as Compose key: RightCtrl.
Using this:

ç Ç ţ ş

Remark that you did not explain what you do to get these characters. We have to guess (and guessing is the start of misunderstanding).

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Hi !

Thank you for your response. I did not understand what are your doubts. I am only saying that for a long time I did not have such type of problem. Two decades ago Linux was struggling with internationalization. Now I am surprise with this and could not resolve this problem, even with your kind help. I never used and/or configured Compose Keys. Can I take a little more of your time and explain how I configure and use Compose Key two solve this problem. The system help does even gives any example.

I think you missed the most important part of my post:

And now you are still not providing any information on what you did “during that long time you did not have such type of problem”.

You seem to think that we were in your house and looked over you shoulder in those times. This is not the case.

Hi !

I understand your point. I only configured the keyboard as “US International with dead keys”. This worked with OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and Mac OS. Now with the latest version of Mac OS you have to configure as “Brazilian” and now “US International with dead keys” does not works with Mac OS. But I could not figure out how to do with OpenSUSE 15.6 Leap version. This was already like a standard.

I understand. But how did (try to do) you create a ç then.

You do something that worked earlier, but that does not work anymore. But we do not know what you do.

But I admit that the fact that you seem yo use a Mac system is new in this thread. Thus it may be that the
keyboard hardware is also something unknown to non-Mac users.

Let me jump in here.

For historical reasons, Brazil has used Microsoft’s US-International keyboard layout, where the ç is obtained by the combination <dead_acute> . Likewise, <dead_acute> resulted in Ç. However, later changes in keyboard layouts and internationalization have changed this behaviour to result in Ć and ć.

This is not an issue that hits SUSE users alone, and there are several “how-tos” on the Internet with instructions on how to address the issue. However, most of these instructions are now obsolete.

On my system (Tumbleweed) I have defined US International as the system keyboard in Yast and added a .XCompose file on my home directory with the following content:

include "%S/en_US.UTF-8/Compose"
<dead_acute> <C>                        : "Ç"
<dead_acute> <c>                        : "ç"

This solved the issue for my KDE applications.

For Gnome and related applications, I also added the line

GTK_IM_MODULES=cedilla

to the /etc/environment file (create it if it doesn’t exist)

Adding some extra historical context.

Brazil has officially defined the ABNT2 keyboard layout, and it is the one usually selected when Brazil is picked as the installation region. However, for quite a long time, from 1984 to 1991, the Brazilian government enacted a law that required that all IT products be made in Brazil. This resulted in massive smuggling and in most people using the standard US layout “adapted” to produce the required Portuguese accented letters, including the Ç and ç. This is what became known in Brazil as the US-International keyboard layout and is still very popular today, especially with a greater availability of US keyboard notebooks on the market.

As a result, we have the official standard, ABNT2, and the expected standard, US-International, which should probably have a Brazil variant to end this mess.

Thank you very much r-salomon. I am used to US International layout and generally the better keyboards come with this layout. Almost two decades and this is yet a problem. I solved the problem with KDE with your to the point instructions. I am yet to see if it solved in Gnome and others Window Managers. I have Ubuntu latest version here and I will test if the problem occurs there also.

Good to see that it worked, at least partially. Unfortunately, it’s not really a “problem” in the sense that there is no standard that says that the dead key + c must result in a cedilla. It is a consequence of the standards bodies disregarding how users have, historically, used the resource. The good news is that, despite being an annoyance, since we have full access to the environment, we can “fix” it.

As for Gnome I solved with keyboard layout “Portuguese (Nativo, for US keyboard”. This resulted exactly in my desired behavior. A simple ’ before “c” resulted at a "ç"as happened with your instructions for KDE. Thank you.

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