IBus: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:23, 8 August 2020

IBus is a bus for various input methods.

Installation

Enabling IBus is described in the manual. Mainly, it can be done as follows:

/etc/nixos.configuration.nix

{pkgs, lib, ...}
{
 i18n.inputMethod = {
  enabled = "ibus";
  ibus.engines = with pkgs.ibus-engines; [ /* any engine you want, for example */ anthy ];
 };
}

Tip

In order to affect your system by your nix-language-specific changes you have to evaluate it, run (as root):

# nixos-rebuild switch

After switching, you still need to logout from your session and login again for ibus to work correctly.

Input methods

To get the list of available engines, you can use the tab completion of nix repl.

$ nix repl
nix-repl> ibus-engines.<Tab>

Custom emojis

Custom emojis can be added to the emoji selection dialog of IBus. This can be used to workaround the fact that GTK does not support compose rules which output more than one unicode codepoint. Here an example Home Manager module:

~/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix

{ pkgs, lib, config, ... }:
let
  /* define here the list of desired favorite emoji */
  fav = {
    shrug = ''¯\_(ツ)_/¯'';
    "markdown-shrug" = ''¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯'';
    flip = ''(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻'';
  };
in
{
  dconf.settings."desktop/ibus/panel/emoji" = with lib.hm.gvariant; {
    favorite-annotations = mkArray type.string (lib.attrNames fav);
    favorites = mkArray type.string (lib.attrValues fav);
  };
}

Then, typing Ctrl+Shift+e and then shrug, Space and Return will insert ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

@@ Line 26: / Line 26: @@
 ==== Custom emojis ====
-Custom emojis can be added to the emoji selection dialog of IBus. This can be used to workaround the fact that GTK does not support compose rules which output more than one unicode codepoint. The core of the method is to set the following hidden gsettings:
+Custom emojis can be added to the emoji selection dialog of IBus. This can be used to workaround the fact that GTK does not support compose rules which output more than one unicode codepoint. Here an example [[Home Manager]] module:
-{{Commands|
-gsettings set org.freedesktop.ibus.panel.emoji favorite-annotations "['shrug']"
-gsettings set org.freedesktop.ibus.panel.emoji favorites "['¯\_(ツ)_/¯']"
-}}
-Then, typing <code>Ctrl+Shift+e</code> and then <code>shrug</code>, Space and Return will insert <code>¯\_(ツ)_/¯</code>.
-But on NixOS, gsettings cannot access schemas without wrapping. In order to workaround this, and make this declarative, here is a possible [[Home Manager]] module.
 {{file|~/.config/nixpkgs/home.nix|nix|<nowiki>
 { pkgs, lib, config, ... }:
@@ Line 40: / Line 33: @@
    fav = {
      shrug = ''¯\_(ツ)_/¯'';
+    "markdown-shrug" = ''¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯'';
      flip = ''(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻'';
    };
-  /* end */
-  listToFile = l: builtins.toFile "fav" (builtins.toJSON l);
-  /* gsettings needs to be wrapped with ibus to find the schemas */
-  gsettings = pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
-    name = "gsettings-for-ibus";
-    buildInputs = [ pkgs.ibus ];
-    nativeBuildInputs = [ pkgs.wrapGAppsHook ];
-    dontUnpack = true;
-    dontBuild = true;
-    installPhase = ''
-      mkdir -p $out/bin
-      ln -s ${pkgs.glib.bin}/bin/gsettings $out/bin
-    '';
-  };
-  /* this script applies our modifications */
-  applyScript = pkgs.writeShellScript "apply-emoji-prefs" ''
-    ${gsettings}/bin/gsettings set org.freedesktop.ibus.panel.emoji favorites "$(${pkgs.coreutils}/bin/cat ${listToFile (lib.attrValues fav)})"
-    ${gsettings}/bin/gsettings set org.freedesktop.ibus.panel.emoji favorite-annotations "$(${pkgs.coreutils}/bin/cat ${listToFile (lib.attrNames fav)})"
-  '';
 in
 {
-   systemd.user.services.ibus-favorite = {
+   dconf.settings."desktop/ibus/panel/emoji" = with lib.hm.gvariant; {
-    Unit = {
+     favorite-annotations = mkArray type.string (lib.attrNames fav);
-      Description = "Set ibus favorite emoji";
+     favorites = mkArray type.string (lib.attrValues fav);
-     };
-    Install = {
-      WantedBy = [ "graphical-session.target" ];
-     };
-    Service = {
-      ExecStart = "${applyScript}";
-      Type = "oneshot";
-      RemainAfterExit = true;
-    };
    };
 }
+</nowiki>}}
-</nowiki>}}
+Then, typing <code>Ctrl+Shift+e</code> and then <code>shrug</code>, Space and Return will insert <code>¯\_(ツ)_/¯</code>.