iBus and emojis menu - 22.04

Support & Help Requests
#1

Am running UM 22.04. Just noticed that sometime in the last 5 days or so, the ability to invoke the emojis window using ctrl+. or ctrl+; has gone away. For example, open pluma and try the key combination; see a small e displayed. A subsequent press of ctrl+. causes the cursor to back over the e and erase it. The right click menu method of inserting emojis still works fine.

Have checked the Language Support app, which appears fine. (US English) Keyboard Preferences app shows US English keyboard correctly. iBus Preferences app, emoji tab, shows the correct shortcuts.

I tried this in an up to date version of UM 22.10 running in a VM on the same machine and could not repeat the "bad" behavior.

Clearly not a big deal, but I thought that I would mention it. Perhaps a very recent update had an unintended side effect.

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#2

I have discovered which update/install caused the problem behavior noted above. - It was Zoom! When you install the Zoom app (Ubuntu 64-bit deb package), it installs iBus components and defines some keyboard shortcuts. This causes conflicts with the other (gtk) apps that respond to the ctrl+. key-press. The solution that I have found is to remove iBus and related components, which results in the removal of Zoom as well.

No more mystery!

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#3

And here is a follow-up. Not being able to avoid Zoom, I installed it one more time. Afterwards and before using it for a meeting, I noticed that the ctrl+. key-press still worked in applications like Pluma. However, after the meeting I noticed that the ctrl+. key-press did not bring up the emojis menu as expected. This time, removing Zoom did not also remove the iBus components (iBus, iBus-gtk, iBus-gtk3, iBus-gtk4, and iBus-data), which had to be removed separately to restore the desired key-press behavior. I relate this in the event that it bothers someone else who wants a solution.

I guess the moral of the story is to avoid Zoom if you can. Use something like Jitsi instead!

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