Bug 493172

try to gather the correct information for your keyboard settings:

% xprop -root | grep XKB

and for your locale:

% locale

and for current IM settings:

% imsettings-list
% ls -l ~/.xinputrc

Thanks, the output of those commands led me in right direction (.xinputrc points to scim configuration), rebooting once more helped.

When I noticed that the dead-keys were not working, I tried to log out and back in, it didn't help. Then I created a new user and switched to that user, dead-keys were not working with that new user neither. Then I rebooted and that didn't help. Then I removed all the scim packages and rebooted, that didn't help. Then I re-installed the scim packages and rebooted, then for a while the dead-keys were working, but I had gotten the scim tray-icon which was new to me so I tried to quit it, it crashed and my dead-keys went back to no-working condition. Rebooting after that solved the problem, I guess just logging out/back in would have also.

Between all the steps above I messed with the keyboard settings, and at some point the .xinputrc link had been made (see the timestamp of the file). My newly created user account doesn't have the .xinputrc -link and dead-keys are not working with that user. My current user and that user have both been created with the adduser -command. The same problem happens (no .xinputrc) if using the GUI tool to add a new user and dead-keys are not working for the new user.

Below is the requested information even though it's now working, the only difference between these and with the non-working users is the missing .xinputrc link from the non-working users.
$ xprop -root | grep XKB
_XKB_RULES_NAMES_BACKUP(STRING) = "evdev", "pc105", "fi", "", ""
_XKB_RULES_NAMES(STRING) = "evdev", "evdev", "fi", "", ""
$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
$ imsettings-list
* 1: SCIM (recommended)
$ ls -l ~/.xinputrc 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 joyr joyr 33 2009-03-31 22:27 /home/joyr/.xinputrc -> /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim.conf
$

(In reply to comment #2)
> My current user and that user have both been
> created with the adduser -command.

Correction to the above, my current user (joyr) was created during the installation of Fedora.

Please give me one more information. what happens if you run xterm and emacs with XMODIFIERS=@im=none?

I ran the following from xterm:

XMODIFIERS=@im=none xterm
XMODIFIERS=@im=none emacs

I tested both with my current user (working dead-keys without the environment variable, has .xinputrc and all other settings as in comment 2), and also tested with a newly created user (missing .xinputrc and dead-keys not working without that environment variable).

Same results with both users: dead keys worked correctly in both applications.

how about XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM then?

Mixed results with XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM

With my current user that has the .xinputrc:
xterm : dead keys work
emacs : dead keys work

With the new user without .xinputrc:
xterm : dead keys work
emacs : dead keys do not work
        I get the error message "<dead-xxx> is undefined"
        where xxx is the dead-key pressed

See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=479336

See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=493017

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This sounds like a duplicate of bug 505100.

We don't use XIM support in imsettings anymore since F-11. closing this as UPSTREAM.