How do I enter characters of a language other than English in a text editor?

I mean, is there a switcher, like [Ctrl][Space] in Windows, with which you can switch between different input methods?

In my RH8 box I have installed Simplified Chinese. But I found no clue to invoke the input methods of this language.

If you have Gnome installed you can start a keyboard switcher applet, you can put many types of keyboard configurations and switch 'em.

On my GNOME desktop, I find "Keyboard" in "Preferences" and "System Settings", and "Keyboard Shortcuts" in "Preferences", but not "Keyboard Switcher".

Where can I find it? Thanks!

do a Right click on the task bar....add to pannel....Utility....Keyboard Layout Switcher.....
there you can add the languages you want....and even set the default language you want.

can i use it in kde too?

I don't think so, but you should check the KDE control center, and see if you can find it there...or something better....READ THE HELP...

Whoa, I just added the disk mounter, now that's useful ...

Hi Correro,

yours is one of the most frustrating questions in working out Linux, it took me ages and ages and a lot of reading/joining dots...here goes :

I assume that you have the necessary packages installed for Chinese such as xcin and the rest. They should have installed by default when you Chinese at install time. I assume that you can also read Chinese, which is the really hard bit!

1) Create new user , eg "gbuser" which will be specifically for Chinese use.
2) Log into the new user, and change the KDE settings so that all the menus,messages etc. are in Chinese :-
K/Configuration/KDE/Personalisation/Country&Language and change to P.R.China. Log out and back into user, and hey presto, menus are in Chinese.
3) now here's the bit you really want. As root, edit the file /etc/chinese/xcin/xcinrc to change the following lines to "NO" (they are defaulted as "YES") :-

(define XCIN_HIDE "NO")
and
(define OVERSPOT_WINDOW_ONLY "NO")
4) in a terminal, type the following to start up the xcin server :-
xcin -x xcin & [I dunno if the xcin -x bit really matters, xcin & is OK]
5) the xcin window should appear, so start up Kword and set the font to a Chinese one like the Ar P1 Kaitim GB (the nicest regular Chinese font) which should have loaded into Linux by default at install time.
6) now press Ctrl + Space and you should be able to input. I think the key is Ctrl+Shift or Alt+Shift to change input methods - try out a couple but Pinyin is the easiest by far.
7) note : the Keyboard Select function in KDE has nothing to do with inputting Chinese coz it's a complicated character set etc. blah blah...

Let us know how that went...cheers...JDW
P.S. cxterm is a cool chinese term, and emacs can also input Chinese text files (even if the user environment is English!) without all this stuffing around...

Sorry! This is REALLY important. without this xcin willnot work. you have to do this in order to make the default locale environment of the Chinese user to be set to simplified Chinese...

Forgot a very important bit of info...when you create the new CHinese user, you have to add the following lines into your /home/[username]/.bashrc file :-

LANG=zh_CN.GB2312; export LANG
LC_ALL=zh_CN.GB2312; export LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE=zh_CN.GB2312; export LC_CTYPE
XMODIFIERS="@im=xcin-zh_CN.GB2312"; export XMODIFIERS

cheers & beers.....

thanks JDW!
i've been so frustrated that i almost gave up
but now i see the light of hope @_@

Hey,

I don't wanna drag this out for ever an ever, but I should have mentioned that if you are in your normal English (or whatever other non-Chinese language is your favourite), you can still enter Chinese into Kword by typing the following into a terminal :-

su gbuser
password : [enter pword]

xcin & kword

So what you're doing is logging into the gbuser environment and running Kword in that environment with the Chineselocale settings...

will try it.

Mon dieu, Bloody Hell, Bozhe mii!, Áí åéíáé äõíáôïí!

All that hassle just to use different languages???

I'm trying to set up about 5 languages on Linux and find it is so frustrating I may go back to Windows.

Shame but it is not user friendly at all

I will keep trying

Mihailo

Yeah, it is a bit of stuffing around, but the above thread is specifically for Chinese, which, like Japanese & Korean, is more difficult to get happening than MS.

For any other languages such as French, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew etc. it is no hassle to set those up at all...KDE keyboard switcher applet does a fine job and you can just type straight into Kword or OO Writer...

Don't lose the faith!

Thanks

Where will I find the KDE keyboard switcher appler?

Regards

Mihailo