Hey everybody,

I'm running Zenwalk and having trouble with SCIM. I've got it installed - such that I have a little tool bar on my screen that allows me to switch through different IMEs and such, but when I open Abiword or anything else that I'd like to type in a foreign language on, specifically Japanese, I don't get the little "input box" that I've read I'm supposed to get. I've tried right clicking on on the field and changing "input method" but the only option is "default". I've also tried pressing "ctrl+space" to no avail.

any clues?

scim is only a frontend. You also need to install an IME program like anthy or prime, plus the related anthy-scim, prime-scim, etc. packages. That's the nice thing about the scim system, you can switch between many different input editors.

Here's a good page on International text support. It focuses on Debian, but I'm sure you can adapt it to your system. http://www.jw-stumpel.nl/stestu.html

Thanks for the reply David.

I briefly skimmed (no pun intended) the page you sent me and will read it in more detail today. But I just wanted to let you know a couple things that I should have earlier while I have your attention.
I should have mentioned that I have downloaded and installed the follwing:

anthy-8130
m17n-db-1.3.3
m17n-docs-1.3.3
m17n-liub-1.3.3
scim-anthy-1.2
scim-m17n-0.2.1
scim-table-0.5.7
scim-1.4.5

When I do a scim -l, this is what I get:

jim[~]$ scim -l
Smart Common Input Method 1.4.5


Available FrontEnd module:
socket
x11

Available Config module:
simple
socket
dummy

Available IMEngine module:
anthy
m17n
rawcode
socket
table
I've started scim by running various combinations of these options, but I always get the same result. I"m very much a newbie with regards to linux and any kind of computer programing in general, but if I had to guess I would say that something has to be changed to tell my computer to use scim for input. I added the following lines to my .xinitrc file as per some instructions I read somewhere:

LC_TYPEC="ja_JP.UTF8"
export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"
scim -f x11 -d

I don't know if this is correct or even does anything, but it is the only thing I can think of that might be wrong since it's the only thing I'm not sure about.

The only other information I think I can provide you with is that I'm running on Zenwalk which runs on a XFCE based desktop.

Thanks again,
Jim