Using IIIMF Chinese in English locale
 

UPDATE:

I now use Ubuntu Hoary 5.04, and simply by launching Synaptic to install SCIM and following the instructions at http://www.ubuntuguide.org, I have been using Hanyu Pinyin in an English environment with no problem. Thanks for all the help offered while I was using Fedora Core!
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Hi,

I have 2 questions regarding IIIMF/input methods...

1. Do you know how to use IIIMF input WITHOUT changing the Language in Fedora Core 3?

I cannot use any imput whatsoever whenever I am in the default US English environment.

However, when I switched to, say, the Simplified Chinese Language at the login screen, I can use the Chinese Pinyin with no problem.

In Windows XP, I can type Chinese Pinyin while the environment (ie. menu, right-click options etc.) is English.

2. What do you think of the Fedora Core 3 IIIMF Pinyin tool vs. the Windows XP Language Bar? It seems like the XP Language Bar is more intelligent and user-friendly, in that it works pretty much like the T9 Text you find in Nokia handphones... it kinda remembers the last word combinations I used, and also usually guesses correctly the words I want to type before I even keyed them in...

On top of that, the XP Language Bar does NOT require me to physically "choose" the word I want by clicking ENTER for every one or two words, and it allows me to choose the words I want by the arrow keys... (in FC3, I have to use the mouse to select some of the words)

So, can I configure my IIIMF to mimic, or perhaps even outshine, the XP Language Bar?

Thanks for your assistance!!


Best Regards,

Rykel
Singapore

Happy User of Fedora Core 3

HI none of the Linux distributions have a useable Chinese input, the iiimf is again totally useless, in that it does not work in many applications, it is very sad to think that Linux want to conquer the market, and the very biggest place or will be soon the largest comuter users in the World - China - is totally ignored, you are 100% right the Windows input system is really good, like yo usay you can use it when in English desktop, well so Fedora claims with iimf you just right click and select input methods, but the sad thing is that it only work in very few applications, now here is the bright side - SCIM - that works just like Windows XP, if not even better, but of cause is not part of the standard Linux distro, but you can try google to find SCIM or try http://sourceforge.net/projects/scim/ or later they wil have a new webside http://www.scim-im.org
Fedora Core 3 has some small problems.
I have redhat enterprises machines and I can tell you that SCIM works better than that of Windows, all our Chinese staff loves SCIM, but I also have two desktops & a notebook with Fedora core 3, and SCIM works on the desktop, but I have some problems with my notebook, but in fedora core 2 SCIM works perfect.

absolutely correct awtocawtoc, install scim (you can get rpms for scim, scim-tables, scim-chinese etc.) from the website) and most of your problems will be solved...scim also allows you to type in both Traditional and Simplified (and Korean, Japanese etc. if you like) in the same document, it is the best multilingual input app going around at the moment...

but don't forget that iiimf is still in development, a good comparison is Scribus, it was almost unusable 18 months ago, look how far that has come since then!

what kind of English Locale
 

if you want to input Chinese in English locale. You need to make sure your locale is not ASCII nor POSIX.

You have to choose ENGLISH-UTF8.

Re: what kind of English Locale
 

may i know how to do it? can you please show me the way of doing it step-by-step? Thanks~~

IIIMF has been developed for almost 8 or 9 years, it's still in development :-)
The age of SCIM is less than 3 years, but it's already more stable than IIIMF, and support more languages than IIIMF :-)

I can tell you that the only fully working input method is the SCIM, the others don't work correct, and even if you are in Chinese locale still not working, only SCIM we use SCIM with Redhat and it workd better than that of XP, well all or Chinese users prefere it to that of XP, as it also has a good wubi, the only snag is with Fedora fc3 there is still problems, or I don't know how to install it in fedora, in redhat I have no problems installing and get it to work.
Still the only Chinese input engine for Linux is the SCIM, so guys just don't bother to to look at others, I have tried them all including the iiimf, and none of the comes even close to SCIM - www.scim-im.org

and I am sure your opinion has not been tinted by the fact that you are one of the creator of SCIM.

Re: Re: what kind of English Locale
 

This is a more difficult question to asnwer. We dont' know what is your system is like, thus, it's difficult to give you precise instruction on changing the locale on your distribution/machine.

in gnome, the easiest way to change the locale is to do so during the log in, where you have a chance to change the "language" of the environment. Many distribution will list both language and encoding for your selection.

I don't use KDE, so I can not help you if you uses KDE.

nor do I familar with Linux enough to change locale manually (it involves several steps to change various aspect of the environment, not very pleasant).

Don't get caught up with "IIIMF" versus "SCIM" debate in this thread. There are Novell employee who is waging an propaganda war against IIIMF here in the forum. Solving your problem is not on their mind.

Without able to change your locale to English-UTF8, you won't able to enter Chinese regardless.

And in case you dont' know how to verify which locale you are using, use the command "locale" in the terminal.

Please specify the distribution and version of the linux which you are using right now, and expert here may able to give you more specific help.

Yes I'm the creator of SCIM. But I'm also a listed contributor of IIIMF, though I have not written any code for IIIMF.

I'm not waging a war. I just want to let you know the fact.

Competition is always good to users, isn't it?

The ultimate goal of SCIM is to cooperate with all possible input method projects to provide an all-in-one multi-lingual input method solution. Now SCIM can work very well with m17n-lib, uim and anthy projects. I hope I can write an adapter between SCIM and IIIMF as soon as possible. Then SCIM and IIIMF can share input methods with each other.

For the problem of using IIIMF Chinese input method in English environment. I really don't know if IIIMF can support inputing Chinese under en_US.UTF-8 locale. However, SCIM can support it.

Well the whole issue here is to get away from the logging out and looging in in different languages, that in year 2005 is going back in time, SCIM does exactly what Windows XP or Windows 2000 can do even better, as you can stay in a English enviroment and just click on the keyboard icon, or do a ctrl+space when you need to input Chinese, just like XP, but like I said better, with more options. That is it .
I have no part in the development of SCIM I'm a user that is all, I have tried them all, and so far no other input system even coms close to SCIM, and think that Linux should make SCIM standard in all the distributions.

let's try to resolve the original poster's problem
 

I am well-aware of issues with IIIMF as I am an user of it. Let's put IIIMF/SCIM issue aside, and see if you guys can help this poor soul to resovle the issue of inputing Chinese in English environment.

Personally, I think the key issue is that one has to switch the his/her locale from ascii/Posix to some sort of UTF-8 environment. If any of you guys knows a distribution-independent, dekstop-independent, step-by-step instruction on change locale to english.utf-8 locale, please post it here, as I am very curious on how to do so myself.

Once that is taken care of, then, there is issue with input framework/input method itself. The user uses Redhat, which means it comes with IIIMF. If you guys recommending SCIM, you guys need to give out specific instructions on ripping out iiimf package and install SCIM one. (and please post it here so I can try it myself) If this is as simple as just installing a RPM, then, it's fine. If it's more involved than that, then, simply telling these newbies to use SCIM is not good enough. They need to know "how."

Then, there is issue with language engine itself...

I am a native english.UTF-8 user myself, as I am more used to English environment yet at the same time can't live without Chinese neither. In my experiences, using Chinese in English environment is a lot more complicated than strict Chinese environment itself. Any input on resolving these issues is highly welcome.

as for iiimf/scim.... we can discuss this on a seperate thread.

Hi using redhat enterprises 3 or redhat 9 you basicly don't need to do anything other than installing three scim RPM's

1 ) scim-0.99.2.1.i586.rpm
2 ) scim-chinese-0.4.0.1.i586
3 ) scim-tables-zh-0.4.0.1.i586.rpm

You can find those packages at sf - But I'm not sure if those RPM's are still there, but if not let me know, and I will give you another link to download from.

I can tell you that for me thet works WITHOU any fiddling, just click on the RPM in the sequence as above, and after restarting X you will have Chinese input in English, just one morething you should also copy some Chinese fonts like Simsun to /usr/share/fonts/defaults/type1

I know that there is newer RPM or tar out, but I can guarantee you that the above works, as I have not tried the newer, I can not say, only that in Fedora fc3 I can also not get the new packages working, we some thirty one computers in our office and all the redhat ws3 or redhat9 machines are installed with this, and works first time, but the Fedora fc3 machines I still have not managed to get working.

Fedora fc2 seams to work without any problems.

The above assumes that you did not modify any language variables or files.

After you have downloaded, and installed the three packages, let me know

thanks for everybody who ever tried to reply my questions. Thanks

To kngharv,

Thanks for the reply and im using FEDORA 2 + Gnome, and what i want to do is to enable Chinese Inputing during i'm under English Gnome enviroment. i know it is possible as i used mandrake community 10.1 before and it is already there after I finished installing. I just need to press Ctrl + Spacebar then an Chinese input bar just came out althought i'm in english enviroment. So, any tips?