Hi,

I'm running Red Hat Linux 9 (2.4.20-8). When I installed linux i made sure to install Japanese language support. From the systems settings menu I can click on languages and select Japanese. This runs Linux with Japanese fonts in program tool bars and icons. However, I am still unable to type in Japanese. Is there any way that I can type japanese text (hiragana, katakana and kanji) in the text editor or programs like Open Office?

There's several softwares that you can use to input Japanese, for gtk apps(gedit, gnome-terminal, gaim xchat etc) try im-ja http://im-ja.sourceforge.net/
For others(such as Open Office) try kinput2
you'll need to either have Canna or FreeWnn running, at least one of them should be loaded on boot if you chose to install Japanese support, if not you can start them by
You only need one of them, for the purpose of this example i'll use canna.
In order to use im-ja install the RPM whch you can find on the website mentioned above, then run 'im-ja-conf', set the Conversion Engine to Canna, restart your gtk app, then right click, select Input Methods then Japanese. Press F6 and you should be able to start entering Japanese, provided that you are using a proper font under a proper locale setting, which you should if you've selected the language setting in the login screen.

As for kinput2 it should come with Redhat, and might even already be installed (rpm -qa | grep kinput2) if not you should be able to find the RPM in one of the CDs.
In order to use it open up a terminal, type "kinput2 -canna&", open up openoffice and you should be able to use it by pressing "ctrl + o", again provided that you are using a right font and encoding.
One problem with kinput2 is that although it should work in most X apps, the default key combination "ctrl + o" is also used in many gtk apps for open file dialogue, but check the man page for more details on its configuration.

wow, thanks for the quick respone. i already had kinput2 installed. when i run kinput2 -canna& with japanese as the language setting, i am able to type in japanese in open office. but there is a problem, even though i'm able to type in japanese, i don't have the right font. the basic fonts for asian documents is set as HG Mincho Light J, which is absent from my list of fonts.

You should be able to add your fonts using
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/spadmin

In case you need it you can find more free Japanese fonts on this website:
http://wiki.fdiary.net/font/

Try mikachan font if you havent already :-) it's under FreeButNotFree section on the page above.

Hi,

Maybe you'd like to take a look at this too:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=109189

You may also want to import windows truetype fonts from windows/fonts folder then use this "/usr/lib/openoffice/program/spadmin" thing to add the fonts.

If you've installed japanese fonts support in redhat, I think you can find the truetype japanese fonts somewhere in /usr/share directories (I forgot where exactly). Just keep exploring