Anecdotes as a Sway user and formerly i3 user. I have a Compose key (RAlt on my current laptop). It behaves inconsistently across apps, because that stuff is i

Anecdotes as a Sway user and formerly i3 user. I have a Compose key (RAlt on my current laptop). It behaves inconsistently across apps, because that stuff is implemented in each app, and they’re not implementing the same functionality. Some ambiguous sequences are interpreted one way in one program (e.g. <-> = ↔ in Alacritty) and another way in another (e.g. <-> = ←> in Firefox). Order and whether includes are involved may or may not influence these things. And I’ve come across one or two programs (generally your do-things-from-scratch, pure-canvas sort of things) where the Compose key just didn’t work at all. And I’ve encountered more than one or two web apps where the Compose key is basically broken. (In general, Compose seems to be handled the same way as IMEs—speaking as a user, not a developer. Pressing Compose in GTK apps inserts an underlined ·, which is then replaced with the characters of the sequence as you type, underlined, which is then finally replaced by the resolved sequence when you’re done.) All this was a problem under X. It’s still a problem under Wayland. It’s not a problem under Windows with WinCompose: it handles it all, not each app; so you don’t get any progress indicator (no underlined · or anything, it just consumes the keystrokes until you finish a sequence), but it all behaves consistently between apps, so long as they run as the current user. (That is: “run as admin” and WinCompose’s hooks don’t apply so the Compose key just doesn’t work.) As for input methods in general… ugh, I recall the trouble I had under i3 with xim and ibus and whatever the other *im things were, it was even more inconsistent than I think I’ve observed under Sway. I don’t remember altogether why or what I did, and I haven’t tried doing exactly the same thing, so maybe it is actually about as bad as ever. But I do know that I’m generally finding a much better experience of input-related stuff under Sway than under i3. I haven’t had to tweak GTK_IM_MODULE or QT_IM_MODULE or XMODIFIERS environment variables or whatever other things for years. Hmm… I also remap Caps Lock to Backspace, and I’ve noticed a couple of apps (e.g. Chromium, no idea if XWayland use is a factor) failing to handle repeat on that key. Little niggles like that aren’t uncommon, again I think there’s too much being left to the apps rather than being handled by the compositor or whatever.