Ubuntu – Where to add “export IBUS_ENABLE_SYNC_MODE=1”

As stated by @von, you CANNOT use your .XCompose with IBUS for now.

You can use uim as Input Method, which supports Unicode, both GTK+ and Qt immodules with legacy XIM support.

A good way to handle your .XCompose and keep existing global Compose is:

1. Install uim:

   sudo apt-get install uim

2. Make it the default Input Method:

   im-config -n uim

3. Edit your .XCompose and add the current keyboard locale (in my case, en_US) as first line:

   include "/usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose"

4. Done! Restart the programs you want to start to get your .XCompose file.

Known Issues

Ubuntu Unity Dash will never produces a cedilla.

Other Distros

I played a bit with .XCompose and Input Methods on modern distros these days, while trying make Linux keep the same keyboard behavior as Windows(TM) for latin languages (output ç instead of ć, no accented consonants, etc).

I created a repo with this instructions (for Ubuntu and other distributions too): https://github.com/raelgc/win_us_intl

My experience will answer your question partially. I could get my wishes only working with SCIM, even though it’s largely unmaintained. iBus couldn’t do it. I need IME for Chinese:

• Wubi86 input (structure-based character input)
• smart pinyin input (sound-based character input)
• number-pinyin-to-accent-pinyin (letter-based letter input: I write pin1yin1 and I get pīnyīn)
• switch between those via hotkey (iBus can’t do this; I use F5, F6, F7, F8)
• don’t screw my dead keys (e.g. my Xserver is configured to do give me ü and é typing ¨u and ´e respectively – some input methods mess with this)