Edit Fcitx config the right way.

What#

There are mainly two Input Methods in Linux. One is IBUS, the other is Fcitx. IBUS is the default Input Method for Gnome Desktop Environment. While Fcitx is preferred for KDE Plasma Desktop Environment.

Why Fcitx#

Today is January 10th, 2023. There is still a bug about IBUS pop-up menu showing at the wrong place in QT applications like Telegram Desktop. And Fcitx works fine in similar situations. So I chose to use Fcitx over IBUS a long time ago.

Issue#

Today, I accidentally disabled a Fcitx notification. And I was struggling to find where to restore this notification. I thought it should be a Desktop Environment config. But it was not.

Hopefully, I’ve been tracking my dotfiles for quite a while. And I also add the Fcitx configuration files to my dotfile repo. So, not taking too long, I noticed that my dotfiles were modified. I found the config that muted the Fcitx notification. It was a Fcitx config file. I was happy and restored the config file to its earlier state.

However, after logout and login the session, I found that the notification was muted again.

It’s weird.

Fix#

After seconds of brainstorming, I finally figured it out.

It turns out to be that Fcitx will save its running configurations to the config file when terminated. So I need to kill the Fcitx process before editing the config file.

Very simple but confused me a bit.