Bug#704585: libgtk2.0-0: XIM input mode indicator for Japanese (with kinput2) is not working right.

[ishikawa]

Package: libgtk2.0-0
Version: 2.24.10-2
Severity: minor
Tags: upstream

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation? See below for details.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

   I posted a possible patch to
   https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=240020

   * What was the outcome of this action?
   The input mode indicator for XIM input method was not shown correctly.
  After the above fix, and replacing im-xim.so with the fixed version,
 XIM input mode indicator is now again shown correctly/

This is about a bug in the up-stream package.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=696624

However, the upstream seems to be interested in gtk3+ and gtk2+ is in
maintenance mode, and after a week, the bug is still
in unconfirmed state despite my attaching the screen image, and a fix.

Since Debian uses gtk2+ still, and without the patch,
I am sure this is affecting some clueless Japanese users,
I am asking this to be fixed soon in Debian package.

The problem is as follows:

Quoted from the above GNOME project bugzilla URL.

For like 8 months, I have noticed that the input mode indicator for
Japanese input that uses XIM protocol (when I use kinput2 for example)
is not working right when I use TB to write Japanese messages and
such.  (And for that matter, this is the same with mozilla's Firefox
(FF) browser, but I don't write lengthy message in Japanese using FF
so often).

The symptom is like this.

Before, when all was well, a small rectangle at the lower-left corner
of TB (or FF) window, attached as an extra small rectangle [not
inside], showed Japanese input mode that uses XIM protocol by using
some Japanese characters to indicate the mode (and I assume Korean or
Chinese characters for people who use XIM input methods to type in
these characters). The character was in black and the background
rectangle was white.

But for like 8 months, the programs, both TB and FF, have shown only
black rectangle and no characters are visible at all there.

The lack of visible input mode is sometimes very irritating because we
can't tell which characters Hiragana, Katakana, we will type in.  (Or
if I make a typing mistake and that is why unintended character showed
up instead of using the incorrect mode, etc.)

This problem began happening after an upgrade of Debian packages last
summer and so I suspect that it may have something to do with the
X-related libraries, but I could not figure out exactly why until
yesterday.  (I suppose ordinary users can't figure out the cause of
such a problem even though the symptom is easy to describe.)

In a post to a Japanese BBS, I found a mention by an anonymous poster
that explains this as follows:

There seems to have been a problem in GTK2 library.  Starting in gtk2
2.21.6, function on_status_window_expose_event() in
modules/input/gtkimcontextxim.c has been changed (to the worse. I
think it means buggy?)  If we revert the function,
on_status_window_expose_event(), to a previous code found in 2.21.5
(or earlier), all is well.  We can run make below modules/input
directory only, and use im-xim.so thus produced to fix the problem,
etc.

This was posted July 5th, 2012, last year.  I wish I had known this
earlier.

I have checked this out and this indeed fixes the problem for me (!).


--- end quote.

The gnome URL has screenshots
and a potential fix.
Useless totally black mode indicator:
https://bug696624.bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=239950

Usable mode indicator after the fix:
https://bug696624.bugzilla-attachments.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=239951

Instead of reverting the function to an older function,
we can use the latest patch which was posted:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/attachment.cgi?id=240020

This uses the newer APIs in the problematic fix that appeared in gtk
2.21.6 and modified a few parameters and all is well with this patch.

I hope Debian can fix this even before the upstream releases the newer
version.

TIA








-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8 (charmap=EUC-JP) (ignored: LC_ALL set to ja_JP.ujis)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages libgtk2.0-0 depends on:
ii  libatk1.0-0         2.4.0-2
ii  libc6               2.13-38
ii  libcairo2           1.12.2-3
ii  libcomerr2          1.42.5-1.1
ii  libcups2            1.5.3-5
ii  libfontconfig1      2.9.0-7.1
ii  libfreetype6        2.4.9-1.1
ii  libgcrypt11         1.5.0-5
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0  2.26.1-1
ii  libglib2.0-0        2.33.12+really2.32.4-5
ii  libgnutls26         2.12.20-4
ii  libgssapi-krb5-2    1.10.1+dfsg-4+nmu1
ii  libgtk2.0-common    2.24.10-2
ii  libk5crypto3        1.10.1+dfsg-4+nmu1
ii  libkrb5-3           1.10.1+dfsg-4+nmu1
ii  libpango1.0-0       1.30.0-1
ii  libx11-6            2:1.5.0-1
ii  libxcomposite1      1:0.4.3-2
ii  libxcursor1         1:1.1.13-1
ii  libxdamage1         1:1.1.3-2
ii  libxext6            2:1.3.1-2
ii  libxfixes3          1:5.0-4
ii  libxi6              2:1.6.1-1
ii  libxinerama1        2:1.1.2-1
ii  libxrandr2          2:1.3.2-2
ii  libxrender1         1:0.9.7-1
ii  multiarch-support   2.13-38
ii  shared-mime-info    1.0-1+b1
ii  zlib1g              1:1.2.7.dfsg-13

Versions of packages libgtk2.0-0 recommends:
ii  hicolor-icon-theme  0.12-1
ii  libgtk2.0-bin       2.24.10-2

Versions of packages libgtk2.0-0 suggests:
ii  gvfs             1.12.3-4
ii  librsvg2-common  2.36.1-1

-- no debconf information