Install XIM: Wasta

Wasta 16

When Installing Wasta 16, It seems that you can choose a Cameroon keyboard as your default keyboard.  When Wasta boots, the Cameron Keyboard will be enabled as default (open up a text editor and type “;e”, but the IBus panel will be lying to you and claiming English is chosen. Unfortunately, as two keyboard managers XIM and IBUS are in conflict.

To Use the Cameroon Keyboard, you need to tell IBUS to use system keyboards. This means that you will not be able to use KMFL (which is based in IBUS) keyboards at the same time.

Verify that IBus is set to allow XIM (system) Keyboards:

1. Right-click on the EN near the clock and choose Preferences.
   
2. This will open IBus Preferences to the General tab. If you will NOT be using IBus, you can uncheck Show icon on system tray to disable the EN icon (this is Optional). Then, click the Advanced Tab.
   
3. On the Advanced Tab, enable Use system keyboard layout and (if you like) Share the same input method among all applications.
   

Activate the appropriate XKB keyboards

If you only need the Cameroon Keyboard.  You are done here, but if you want to install other keyboards, like English or French, you’ll need to follow these steps.

1. Open Preferences, open  System settings.
   
2. Under System Settings, open Keyboard.
   
3. This will display the Keyboard dialogue, click the Layouts Tab.
   
4. On the Layouts tab, click the “+” sign in the bottom-left corner.
   
5. This opens the Choose a Layout dialogue.  Type “cam” in the search box and choose the keyboard you want to add. Click Add.
   
6. You will return to the Keyboard Layouts tab and your new Keyboard will be listed.
   
7. Click Options… and you will see the Keyboard Layout Options dialogue.
8. Click the Triangle next to Switching to another layout and choose an option. I suggest Left Alt+Left Shift, the same as Windows. Click Close.
   
9. If you select a keyboard and click the   icon, you can see the current layout.
   
10. Click Close and Close to exit both windows.

Add an Applet to Enable XIM Keyboard Switching

1. Right click on an empty part of the Taskbar and choose Add applets to the panel.
   
2. The Applet you want is called Keyboard.  Right-click on it and choose Add to panel. Note that the keyboard switcher will not display if you have only chosen ONE system keyboard.
   
3. If the grey circle beside the Keyboard Applet turns RED, you may need to remove the applet and add it again.
4. You can now click on the Flag near the Clock and choose a new keyboard. If you enabled the keyboard shortcut earlier, you can also switch keyboards by pressing Left Alt and Left Shift at the same time.
   
5. If you would prefer to see CM instead of the flag icon, right-click on the flag and choose configure. Uncheck the option Use flags to display keyboard layouts.

Using IBus (and KMFL) and XIM keyboards side-by-side

If you did not disable IBus’  Show Icon in system tray in  IBus settings (Step 2 of Verify that IBus is set to allow XIM (system) Keyboards) It seems to be possible to use XIM keyboards alongside IBus keyboards (including KMFL Keyboards) in Wasta/Ubuntu 16.

Choose a Keyboard from either the XIM menu (the one with the flags) or the IBus menu (nearest the clock), and you can type happily in either input method. It seems to keep whichever you select last.

Disabling IBus completely: Option 1 – im-config

As set up above, IBus will run but be disabled.  If you find that this is annoying, and you use only XIM keyboards, such as the Cameroon Keyboard, then you do not need IBus running in the background. You can choose to disable IBus completely.  This is COMPLETELY Optional.

1. Open a terminal and type “im-config”. This will open the Input Method Configuration tool. Click OK on the first screen.
   
2. Then click Yes to explicitly select a user configuration.
   
3. Choose xim and click OK.
   
4. The next window is a confirmation. It explains that you will need to restart X to activate the configuration. The easiest way to do this is to Log out/log in or reboot.
   
5. After a Reboot the EN representing IBus will be gone.