dead key for accents does not work in Oxygen 10.3 on Ubuntu

[Wolfhart]

Hello,

I am using Oxygen 10.3 on Ubuntu. I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 12.10 to 13.10 and am now experiencing a weird bug. The dead key to produce accented characters (e.g., "´" + "e" = "é") does not work in Oxygen, although it does work in other applications. That is, in Oxygen typing "´" + "e" produces "e", without the accent. Hitting the dead key does not show any effect. The weird thing about it is this: Right after launching Oxygen, the dead key [i]does[/i] work, but after switching to another application and then returning to Oxygen, it has stopped working.

Searching on the internet, I found out that there have been problems with the dead key in java applications on Ubuntu:

http://bugs[dot]launchpad[dot]net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-6/+bug/540751

(In this link the dots are replaced by "[dot]" because otherwise the system does not let me post the link.)

But in this bug report the problem is said to be solved under Ubuntu 13.10, whereas for me the problem appeared under that version of Ubuntu. Any ideas about what might be the problem, and about how to resolve it?

Thank you in advance for your help,
Wolfhart

[adrian]

Hi,

First I have to mention that Oxygen v10.3 is an end of life product, so we officially no longer provide technical support for it.
Note that at this time you can still purchase an upgrade to the latest version from any old version of Oxygen.

This looks like a problem between the Java runtime (JRE) bundled with Oxygen (Java SE 6u11) and Ubuntu. If this bug has been resolved in the OpenJDK distribution from Ubuntu, you will have to install that and bypass the JRE bundled with Oxygen.

1. To install OpenJDK follow the instructions found here:
http://openjdk.java.net/install/
OpenJDK 6 would be preferable for Oxygen v10.x, but I believe only OpenJDK 7 is available in Ubuntu 13. Please note that Oxygen 10 (released in 2008) has never been tested with Java 7 (released in 2011), since it was not available at that time. So you might encounter some unforeseen issues.

If you have several Java runtimes installed, make sure OpenJDK is set as default:

Code: Select all

sudo update-alternatives --config java

Note that Oxygen will not work with a headless Java runtime, it needs the full, Swing-enabled, Java runtime.

2. To bypass the JRE bundled with Oxygen, quit the application, navigate to the Oxygen installation folder and rename the 'jre' folder. e.g. 'jreold'. When you start Oxygen, it will automatically pick up and use your system installed Java runtime.
You can check what Java runtime is Oxygen running on in Help > About, "System properties". Look for the properties:

Code: Select all

java.runtime.name

java.runtime.version

3. Start Oxygen as usual and check for the problem.

If this doesn't fix the problem, or makes things worse, you may want to try Java SE 6 from Oracle, found here:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/ ... index.html
Look under Previous Releases > Java SE 6.
After installing this, make sure the JAVA_HOME environment variable points to the Java runtime installation folder, or simply move the Java runtime folder to the Oxygen folder and rename it to 'jre'.

Regards,
Adrian

[Wolfhart]

Hi Adrian,

Thank you for the prompt reply! Bypassing the JRE bundled with Oxygen indeed solved the problem with the dead key for accents, but it did have some side effects (most importantly, the application is now considerably slower in starting up and performing certain actions). So I would like to ask: Would upgrading to Oxygen 15 give me a faster application with all of the keys working? That is, has Oxygen 15 been tested on Ubuntu 13.10?

Thanks again,
Wolfhart

[adrian]

Hi,

Yes, Ubuntu is one of the Linux distributions that we test against. v15.2 has been tested on Ubuntu 13.10 (both 32 and 64 bit).
I can't really comment on how fast v15 is when compared with v10 (it's more than 5 years old), we've never compared that far back. In most regards it's definitely faster as we make improvements and optimizations in each new version. But, it may be slower to start, due the increased number of tools and features in the new version.

I would recommend downloading v15 and requesting a free 30 day trial license from the after-download page to see for yourself if it's satisfactory.
Download <oXygen/> XML Editor

Regards,
Adrian