Enabling C cedilla (ç) on GNOME - updated way

I use an english keyboard but also happen to type in Portuguese. To type in accents, a standard way is adding a new keyboard source (English alt. intl.) and use dead-keys to compose accents. This works pretty well in most cases, except many people (like me) are used to type ' + c to get a Ç (C cedilla), but instead, with the default configs, an accented Ć is what you get.

There are several ways of solving this issue and they changed over time. Nevertheless, when you google for it, you’ll find solutions that includes modifying system files such as /usr/lib/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/immodules.cache or /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose and /etc/environment. While these solutions may work, I was trying fix it within my own dotfiles and not touching system files if possible.

After some digging, here is the final solution, and it works for both GTK and non-GTK applications.

1. Create a ~/.XCompose file with the following content:

    # UTF-8 (Unicode) compose sequences
   
    # Overrides C acute with Ccedilla:
    <dead_acute> <C> : "Ç" "Ccedilla"
    <dead_acute> <c> : "ç" "ccedilla"
   

2. Run the following command:

    $ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "{'Gtk/IMModule': <'ibus'>}"
   

3. Reboot or restart X11

What it does is basically add a XCompose override at your home folder. GTK also use it as a source for its own compose table. However, it won’t just work unless you tell it to use ibus as the input method. One way of doing so would be just setting this property: org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-im-module, but unfortunately any changes you do at this property will be reset when you reload the GNOME session. That’s because gnome-settings-daemon will define this value based on whether or not the current input source needs ibus or not. Luckily, there’s a way of overriding that value - setting org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides values.

Hopefully it is just enough to work fine on modern systems (GNOME 3.38+), but let me know if this doesn’t work for you.

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