Does Redhat9.0 have a Chinese input system by default?

Hi, I am using Mandrake10, but the Chinese input problem really mess me up.

Just want to ask does Redhat 9.0 have a Chinese input system by default installation, can it be used properly once we have the operation system installed, without any further configuration?


Thank you!

Hi,

Both Redhat 9.0 and Mandrake 10.0 have Chinese input systems that come with the CDs (these are xcin & chinput), however, neither distro would load all the necessary bits and pieces at install time unless you specify that you want to include Chinese (Simp and/or Trad) during the installation process.

I have after many moons of reading other people's experiences, testing, tearing out hair, crying etc. managed to work out how Chinese input can be made functional in a Linux distro, I use Mandrake by choice (probably an easier and more suitable distro for home desktop PC users), but I also installed Red Hat 9.0 and was very impressed with their language selection settings at login time. Once setup you don't have to really do anything, except select Chinese at login time and all the locale environment variables and Chinese input apps will work. However, I prefer to work in an English environment and just call up Chinese input when I need it.

That being said I wasn't so impressed with Redhat's lack of mp3 support and the fact that my Creative Vibra 128 didn't like Redhat very much and I had a silent PC...

So if you wish to keep Mandrake, getting it setup for Chinese input is really quite quick & easy if you know exactly what to do.

There are many postings in which we have gone over how to set it up in MDK, however, in short, you need to do the following :

1) make sure that you selected Chinese as additional languages at install time.
2) if you wish to use Simplified Chinese, my tip is to download a great IME app called fcitx 2.0 at www.fcitx.org and install that.
2) create a separate Chinese user that you can use as a Chinese environment for KDE/Gnome
3) add the following lines to that user's ~/.bashrc file :-

export LANG=zh_CN
export LC_ALL=zh_CN
export LC_CTYPE=zh_CN
export XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx


[Please note that if you want Trad Chinese input, swap zh_TW.Big5 for zh_CN above, and instead of fcitx type in "xcin" in the XMODIFIER line.]

Save the file and logout and login to your English (or whatever is your main language environment) user in either KDE or Gnome.
4) Open a terminal window (e.g. Konsole) and type the following :-

$ su chinese_user
password :

$ fcitx & oowriter
This will start up the fcitx input server and then open OO Writer with Chinese menus. Select a nice Chinese font, hit CTRL+SPACE to open the fcitx input window and select Pinyin for input and you are away!

This sounds a little long winded and you may go with Redhat which is no problem but once you have it setup in Mandrake it is really convenient to use Chinese input without logging out of your main environment...

Have fun!

jdw

p.s. I use fcitx because it looks great (nice input window colours) and most importantly it seems to work with every app I use Chinese for, e.g. oowriter, kmail etc.

Thank you for your long post

How to check whether I have selected Chinese as additional language at install time? ( I install Mandrake by default )

I follow the steps what you told me, and I get this error, any solutions:

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

Error: FCITX can only run under X

FCITX -- Get Signal No.: 11
FCITX -- Exit Signal No.: 11

[1] 7930
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

cannot connect to X server
Installation of OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 failed
[1] Done fcitx-2.0.1/fcitx

Hi,

1,000 apologies, I assumed you were running KDE or Gnome, which as you would know are desktop environments that run under the X Window System. Try it again when you have either logged in to one of these graphics environments, or from the console type "startx" to, yes, you guessed it, start the X server...

If you want to type in Chinese in Linux while logged in the console environment, you can use a nice input server program called "jmcce", do a search for Mandrake rpms at rpmfind.net or through Google. This used to be included in the distro but they took it out.

How to check if you selected Chinese at install time, well, if you can't remember doing it you probably didn't. You can either reinstall Mandrake and at the first or second screen where it asks you for a language for the install, hit the "Advanced" button and you can select from the languages listed (probably the easiest way); or, you can install Chinese locale, input server (xcin, chinput) and KDE locale packages from the Mandrake disks...I'm at work and I cannot access Linux here, so I can't remember the names of these packages. I'd do a reinstall if that's not too stressful...

cheers,

jdw

Hi,

Here's some of those files :-

kde-i18n-Chinese-3.1-2.noarch.rpm
kde-i18n-Chinese-Big5-3.1-2.noarch.rpm
ttfonts-zh_CN-2.12-1.noarch.rpm
ttfonts-zh_TW-2.11-19.noarch.rpm

These should be on the third Mandrake CD...the other files you need are the locales packages, there will be two of these to install, so search for any package with the name "locale" on the CDs and select the Chinese ones...

jdw

thank you very much JDW

I have get my fcitx working, quite nice.

But I really don't like the chinese character's looking in Mandrake KDE (I am using english enviroment).

hi,

That's good! However, I found the Arphic Chinese fonts in Mandrake (and I imagine other distros as these are free fonts) to be quite nice looking...particularly the Kaiti font for Simplified Chinese...

cheers,

jdw

hi, JDW

I reinstall my mandrake Linux 10 yesterday
my normal account is 'chinaundead', and I create a chinese user account named 'fcitx' as well
The problem is after I successfully install fcitx in my 'fcitx' user account, and add these lines
export LANG=zh_CN
export LC_ALL=zh_CN
export LC_CTYPE=zh_CN
export XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx

into the .bashrc file, logoff and login

then type: fcitx & oowriter, when I use CTRL+SPACE to call fcitx, it doesn't come out, just a blank space. Then I type 'locale' in terminal, settings has changed to zh_CN other than LANG, it is still en_US (LANG=en_US). So I type LANG=zh_CN in terminal in order to change the LANG setting, it works, and I can use fcitx in my 'fcitx' account.

When I login as 'chinaundead' account, then
su fcitx
LANG=zh_CN
fcitx & oowriter

fcitx doesn't work, I still can not use it in my 'chinaundead' account!

Any solutions? Thank you!

hi chinaundead,

if when you type locale in the terminal, then it gives en_US.UTF-8 output, then you cannot be logged properly into your "fcitx" account through a console window, or it is not set properly for the .bashrc file. If that is the case, then fcitx will not work when you press CTRL-SPACE.

1) double check to make sure that /home/fcitx/.bashrc has the LANG=zh_CN etc. lines appended. [I think you may have added those lines to /home/chinaundead/.bashrc by mistake]

2) when you are logged in in "chinaundead" account, open a new Konsole terminal, login in to "fcitx" account there and then run locale. It should say "zh_CN" on all the output. If it does, then the fcitx input server should now work.

remember that in order to run an application with fcitx you must run that application from the same terminal window that you used to login in to "fcitx" account. If you log in to "fcitx" account and then open an app from another window, that window will use the "chinaundead" locale settings...

hope this helps!

jdw

Hi,

I check many times in the fcitx's bashrc file, I have add those lines in it, and when I type locale, it says:
LANG=en_US
LC_CTYPE="zh_CN"
LC_NUMERIC="zh_CN"
LC_TIME="zh_CN"
LC_COLLATE="zh_CN"
LC_MONETARY="zh_CN"
LC_MESSAGES="zh_CN"
LC_PAPER="zh_CN"
LC_NAME="zh_CN"
LC_ADDRESS="zh_CN"
LC_TELEPHONE="zh_CN"
LC_MEASUREMENT="zh_CN"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="zh_CN"
LC_ALL=zh_CN

seems like only the LANG setting doesn't change
Any way to force the LANG setting to change?

Cheers!

hi,

can you print and post your .bashrc file here?

if you have the line :

export LANG=zh_CN

in this file then there shouldn't be a problem.

for the time being, you can type this line in the terminal after you have logged in to "fcitx" account, then this LANG locale setting will work for the duration of that terminal session...

jdw

my bashrc file for fcitx account:

# .bashrc

# User specific aliases and functions
export LANG=zh_CN
export LC_ALL=zh_CN
export LC_CTYPE=zh_CN
export XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/home/fcitx/fcitx-2.0.1

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
. /etc/bashrc
fi

try putting all the "export" lines at the end of the file...I don't know if that will change things, but i can't think of anything else at the moment! i put mine at the end of the file and it works for all the LANG, LC_CTYPE etc. settings...

jdw

Hi, JDW

Millions of thanks, after I put the 'export' llines at the end of the file, it works now!!!

Thank you very much again!