[H-GEN] unable to write accents, etc., in KMail

[David O'Brien]

I often need to write in Spanish and sometimes in Italian but for some reason 
on one of my machines (Mandrake 10.1 Official) I cannot write accents, etc. 
These accents, tildes, etc., display fine in mails that I receive from 
others, but the usual combination of a dead key plus a vowel, etc., does not 
work. I have added Spanish I believe in the same way as I have to two other 
machines, both of which work fine, so I'm at a loss as to discover what is 
wrong. I've tried different character encodings, etc., to no avail. Another 
curious thing, when I use xchat, the accents appear fine. I'm also 99% sure 
that this used to work ok, so something has changed, I just can't work out 
what.

Anyone have any clues?

thanks
David

-- 
The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.
	Edward de Bono