Dead keys suddenly not working in Emacs

Question

I'm using the emacs package on debian 10 and the dead keys for typing accents on characters (for instance, á) are no longer working. WHen I type the dead key, some kind of tiny window or artifact gets displayed, and then when I type the character itself the artifact disappears but nothing gets typed. I think I must have unwittingly toggled some option, because I haven't changed anything in locale,etc and all other applications except emacs work well re typing of accents. What can I do to get dead keys working again? Thanks

Answer 1

I have the same problem.

Reproduced with emacs -Q, version GNU Emacs 27.1 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.23, cairo version 1.16.0)

A workaround is disabling the input methods, as described in https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DeadKeys.

Namely the option of unsetting the XMODIFIERS environment variable works for me: env XMODIFIERS= emacs.

Launching emacs like this, the pop-up does not show and the XKB-defined dead keys produced the combined characters. I believe that this means giving up on all the fancy input method facilities provided by emacs, but I don't use those anyways.

The first workaround described in the Emacs Wiki, (require 'iso-transl), does not do anything for me.