German umlauts are missing, Kubuntu 9.10

[O. Sinclair]

Hausmoasta wrote:
> Hi Bas,
> don't know who else will follow this thread - so I'll try to stay in
> english.
> 
> Bas Roufs schrieb:
>> /Hello Tom
>> /
>>
>>     Hi!
>>     My umlauts have gone. Unfortunately, not everywhere. ,....
>>
>>
>> /
>> Go to the following menu: K > System Settings > Regional and Language
>>> Keyboard settings.
>> Than, look at the list of available lay-outs and click at 'Germany'
>> and press the little green triangle to the right in order to
>> activate'the German layout. After doing so, you will see a list of
>> 'lay-out variants'. I advise you to try one or more of the following
>> variants:
>> dead acute
>> dead grave acute
>> Romanian key ...dead keys
>> Sun dead keys
>> Macintosh dead keys
>> /
> None of them worked. The function itself is working, when I try Dvorak I
> get: ,.pyf
> But this way should influence all applications. My problem is, that
> there are some applications (openoffice, kate,..) with no problems and
> some applications which don't want to show me the umlauts (Mozilla,
> gedit). And that all depends on the logged-in user.
>> /A so-called 'dead' key can be a key with ", ', `, ~, ^. If you press,
>> by example, one time at " and immediately afterwords one time at a,
>> you will get ä. The combination of ' and e delivers é. Etc. If you
>> need ' or " or another dead key sign, press it two times quickly one
>> afte another. By using 'dead keys' I can type considerably quicker in
>> languages like German and French.
>> /
> But there's a button on my german-keyboard with the umlaut-a, there
> should be no reason to use such a workaround. Even because it is working
> in other applications, users,..
>> /Press at 'apply' in order to change the settings throughout the system.
>>
>> Stay at 'keyboard settings', but go to the tab 'advanced'. Scroll
>> through that list till you see 'compose key position'. There, choose
>> 'right win' or another button as ´compose key'. Several characters
>> that cannot be invoked via a 'dead key' can be found via a 'compose'
>> key. In order to get the character ç (in e.g. François), I first press
>> in my case right-win, than , than c.
>> Press again at 'apply' in order to get this change throughout the system.
>>
>> I hope this will help you. Respectfully yours,
>> /
> Thank you. But these hints didn't work. Any chance to install something
> like a keyboard-sniffer? It is funny, that kvkbd makes the same
> problems, so can except problems with the hardware.
> Ciao
> Tom
I will chip in with a clue, have no idea of the solution. I use Swedish 
keyboard and my/our umlauts are working as expected. However, suddenly I 
could not type the "@" sign, it resides on ALT GR + 2 for us. Whatever I 
did I got 2 or " as outcome.

Remembering that someone had headaches with a key combination I went to 
System Settings, Regional & Language, chose Keyboard Layout followed by 
tab Advanced.

Among many settings in there I found "Key to choose 3rd level" with 
nothing ticked. I ticked "Right Alt" and voila - @ is back in business.

Could it be that you also must set some box among these to get your 
umlauts kicking in? Also I set "meta" to be mapped to Win keys and some 
more "dead keys" came alive.

Best,
Sinclair