Bug#1032347: gnome-control-center: Keyboard settings: disabling the 'Compose Key' is not persisted in user dconf settings

[James Addison]

Package: gnome-control-center
Version: 1:43.4.1-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

The 'Keyboard' panel in gnome-control-center allows configuration of 'Special
Character Entry' keys, and on my system this currently displays two entries:

  - Alternative Characters Key (value: Disabled)
  - Compose Key (value: Left Super)

Updating these values takes effect during the current gnome-shell session, and
when the keys are given assignments, those assignments are correctly persisted
across sessions.

However: in the particular case of disabling the 'Compose Key' (which has a
non-empty default), the setting is not persisted.

To explain another way: although disabling the 'Compose Key' using the keyboard
panel takes effect in the current session, it is restored to the default value
('Left Super' in this case) after the user logs out and logs back in.

This seems to be because when the 'Compose Key' is disabled, there is no
configuration entry for it written to the user's relevant dconf entry, which
is '/org/gnome/desktop/input-sources/xkb-options'.

As a workaround it is possible to use the 'dconf' command-line interface to
configure an empty mapping for the compose key:

  $ dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/input-sources/xkb-options "['compose:none']"

This may be an upstream issue and I plan to report it there if & when it is
confirmed.

Thanks,
James