[Interest] how to handle non-ASCII input in qt

[varro]

I'm writing a Qt application using the ruby bindings in which I need
to be able to support entering non-ASCII data (accented characters and
so on).  Googling seems to indicate that the normal way of handling
this is using ibus to provide an input method.  Although I've
installed ibus, it doesn't start (running ibus-daemon results in a
"cannot execute default panel program"), and I've unable to solve
this.  (Documentation on ibus is appalling.)  Can anyone help with
this?

(Note: this is using X under FreeBSD, no DE [just a window manager].)