Japanese input on Linux

[Ziggy]

I was just wondering, has anybody every successfully managed to get Japanese text input to work on Linux?

When I start SCIM and press CTRL+Space, I do get the nice-little display - but the input stays the same. Do I need to change my xkbmap? I'm a dvorak user, by the way (QWERTY is stupid).

I'm using Xorg running on Linux 2.6.10-ck - and no, I don't use KDE!

 

[dc_johnson45]

I was just wondering, has anybody every successfully managed to get Japanese text input to work on Linux?

When I start SCIM and press CTRL+Space, I do get the nice-little display - but the input stays the same. Do I need to change my xkbmap? I'm a dvorak user, by the way (QWERTY is stupid).

I'm using Xorg running on Linux 2.6.10-ck - and no, I don't use KDE!

Here's a pretty good guide for getting Japanese text input up & running on Linux (KDE & Gnome). Its 'gentoo specific', but it should be easy enough to customize/follow for other distros.

FYI, 'emerge ' is how you install (from source) packages on gentoo. Just replace 'emerge' with your distros method.

 

[J44xm]

There's no link!

 

[GaijinPunch]

Google "Japanese on Linux" and you'll find it. There's one specific guide that just about everyone uses. Has info on many distros

 

[John Lemon]

This topic has given me a lot of grief as well. In my experience, the easiest way to do it is to set your entire system to Japanese via the logon screen that appears before your window manager is loaded (provided that you have generated a Japanese locale.) If you don't want the majority of your window manager to be in Japanese, things are going to be trickier. At any rate, follow GaijinPunch's advice and google around a bit.

 

[GaijinPunch]

This topic has given me a lot of grief as well. In my experience, the easiest way to do it is to set your entire system to Japanese via the logon screen that appears before your window manager is loaded .

That doesn't always work. It will work for KDM & GDM Display Managers, but not all distros use those as the default. Also, simply doing that will only display Japanese. If you don't have some type of IME and kanji converter running, you can't type in Japanese. I'm a recent anthy convert.. very easy to setup with Gentoo.

 

[Takayama]

Ugh. This'll give me an excuse to learn linux a little better, as though I needed one. Anyone got anything specific for SuSe?

 

[GaijinPunch]

Did you try Googling "Japanese on Linux" like I mentioned above? Believe me, it's one of the first three hits... all the info you need... should have Suse info. However I recall Suse as being multi-lingual (including Japanse) out of the box. Tried screwing around in YaST2?

 

[dc_johnson45]

:sorry:

Gentoo Forums :: View topic - HOWTO: Enabling Japanese (or: CJK in KDE & Gnome)

I love linux, but this is a lot easier under Windows/XP... I wish there was an easy to use version of the MS IME for Linux...

 

[iulius]

As a low-hassle alternative consider running jwpce under wine. Version 1.50 runs perfectly in Fedora 3.

The program is a Japanese word processor with inline kanji conversion which you can use to copy and paste into your browser/messenger/whatever. It has its own bitmap fonts but obviously you'll need a Japanese font in your system if you want to see what you've pasted.

Also, if you're as clueless about the language as I am, it's got an integrated dictionary (based on Jim Breen's EDICT--what else?) and just about every kanji lookup method I've run across.