Hi!
Since I'm running slack-current, I added the recently new scim packages for input.
Unfortunately, after that, caret e, instead of "ê", are displayed as "^e" (the same for "î" or "â").
Looking around, it seems that this is a regular issue with dead keys in SCIM when having several languages set up, especially arab. Here is a french topic about this :
http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1530889

The proposed solution seems rather Ubuntu-centric, is there an appropriate fox for Slack?

I have battled (successfully with the aid of Alien_Bob) to get scim up an running in Slackware 12, but I haven't installed the recently-made packages. Make certain your language locale settings are correct (should see "en_US.UTF-8" when you issue the command "locale" in a terminal), and is your keyboard set to generic input settings?? As far as I know, Alien_Bob's packages automatically configure the other troublesome GTK / QT stuff. I run a generic US 104 keyboard and am able to "stack" Tibetan scripts using the m17n form of scim.

Thanks for the input. It's always troublesome when something has been working perfectly for years and suddenly isn't anymore because of some new packages one doesn't know much about. :-)
I'll check your suggestions tonight. I'm probably using french locale, not en_US.UTF-8 so that may be the issue. Other accentuated characters work fine though, it seems related to dead keys essentially, so I suspect it's more a keyboard issue than a locale (OpenOffice, for instance, allows me to enter caret without problems, but no apps in KDE).

I may not be helping you much. Just reread your post and evidently you have been going along fine before installing the scim. At their website (www.scim-im.org), they do want you to configure your computer to the en_US.UTF-8, so that is what I did.At the "locale" command, there are a lot of different settings showing. Perhaps, if you know the correct one, you can leave it in French and have things enter correctly (i.e. "LC_CTYPE=fr_XX.UTF-8). I was just laying out what I am using.

OK, I've set up my locale properly as "fr_FR.UTF-8" and left just English and French enabled in the Scim config. Now instead of "^e", I just get "e" but no caret yet.
My keyboard is not set up with a particular locale in xorg.conf, and before this problem occurs, I was essentially setting the keyboard through the KDE keyboard map module.
I tried in Gimp and I could use the dead keys, so I suspect I got the good old deadkeys problem with SCIM and KDE. I'm going to look around, there seems to be a lot of report for that around the net.

Mmm, apparently, Ubuntu uses "scim-brige" as QT_IM_MODULE, not "scim".
Maybe I should give it a try.

I am at a loss rvdboom, and would have to search the same as you from this point. A thing that further complicates things is the "skim"- not only because the spelling is the close to scim, but it seems to be a redundant interface to keep one loyal to KDE. I never could get skim to install even though I had scim working.

When you say you made settings in the keyboard map module, do you really mean the "keyboard layout" in the Control Center ("Languages and Accessibility")??

Yes, I used to select french keyboard in the Control Center as it worked for me (provided I choose the correct keyboard model, in my case a Logitech Internet Keyboard or something like that).
I do not understand yet what "skim" is about, but it's not installed with the Slack packages yet apparently (at least not available to non-root users as scim is).

As I understood, scim is supposed to replace completely any localizing mecanism for input, right?
So maybe I should somehow disable specific layouts in KDE?

Skim sits atop scim and gives you some sort of KDE integration. I believe scim works (defaults) with GTK (gnome stuff) while KDE is QT. I have some other apps (like Inkscape) that required some extra install dependencies to work. It is possible my setup is working cause there are little "helper" apps that are facilitating something. If I understood Alien_Bob, skim will be in the next release (and it was apparently not a problem to set it up).

I believe that when you toggle scim (Cntrl+Space), it (scim) takes over the inputs. If you see the "scim setup" window, you should be able to run the app. Have you tried enabling the "French" keyboard option in the "global settings" part of the scim setup instead of in the Control Center?? Maybe scim has it's own way of entering the marks for French.

The only other thing I can think of is to experiment with "xorgconfig" to try other keyboards as well as all parts of the "locale" settings.

Thanks for all the suggestions, my computer apparently decided to go silent this morning so I'm not going to be able to make any test before several days. :-(
Anyway, I did configure scim to use french keyboard, but I actually didn't try to click on Ctrl-Space, so I may not have been using scim at all from the begining... Maybe scim just disabled the dead keys...
I run the test once my computer is up and running again and in any case, wait for skim.
Thanks for all the help anyway. :-)

Skim will not be in the next release since it is not required.

Eric

I have some problems with scim.
I use fcitx to input chinese before adding scim packages in slack current.

When i upgraded to gtk+2-2.12.8 and run gvim, i got some warnings that depends on scim.
So i have to install all the scim packages.

But scim had some weired things.
When i use scim to input "mingf" in gvim, i got some unrecognizable characters.
I found only this word not work, all others ok.
And in other apps like openoffice and kedit, all words are fine include "mingf".

So weired. Anyone knows how to fix it?
btw: my locale is set to zh_CN.GBK

the "skim" front end was redundant anyway. So who needs the clutter (and KDE can get a little "invasive")??

zhoun, the suggested scim configuration is primarily "en_US.UTF-8" to get thing into some sort of standard Unicode (I think). It isn't difficult to reset your locale and experiment a little.

Yes, i had tried to change the locale to "en_US.UTF-8" or "zh_CN.UTF-8", it's ok.

Question to rdvboom.

Did you solve your issue with caret (^e instead of ê)?

I'm using Slackware 12.1 and I have the same issue with QT applications (kedit, kword). But GTK applications work fine (Firefox and Gimp correctly give ê).

I've selected French keyboard in SCIM settings but I still have the issue.

Help would be appreciated.

Additional information: when I run

I have no caret issue. So SCIM is no doubt part of the issue.