Hi I’m new to Linux and to Suse.I want to be able to input Chinese (both simplified and traditional). I have tried searching the forums for a solution but have not found any clear guidance for doing this. I have already enabled through Yast, Chinese (traditional and simplified) as second language. I have also found Scim though Applications>System>Configuration.In the SCIM settings I disabled all of the other languages except the ones i need and set the GTK toolbar to show up in the system tray. I have also through the configure desktop option enabled the keyboard layout to switch between China (chinese) and USA (english). After doing these things I am still unable to input Chinese. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Hi,
you can enable the chinese IME by changing your primary language to chinese, at YAST, then logout.
After logging back in again, the chinese IME should be working.
You can change the primary language back to english afterwards.
HTH
To input Chinese, install scim-pinyin and scim is enough.
Please don’t set Chinese as your primary language,it won’t help, and mess up your menus with a lot of Chinese characters.I believe that there is a bug with scim-panel-gtk: the keyboard-like tray icon won’t shown on GNOME panel after login.I guess that scim-panel-gtk was not initialized properly, so kill it, and it will start automatically again. Here is a workaround:
Put this script in Control Center -> System -> Startup Applications:
scim-fix.sh
#!/bin/sh
killall scim-panel-gtk
Regards.
a14331990
Hi,
I also have a problem similar to adsum01nl.
I can’t write in japanese. I have already installed japanese language support (through YaST), installed scim and scim-anthy and the keyboard on the panel appeared but it wouldn’t let me change to anthy input. I could change the settings and anthy settings appeared there but neither the shortcuts nor the “crown” (simbol of anthy) appeared. After that I tried to install skim, skim-anthy (I’m on kde) and even UMI and they all started up but the option to change input never appeared.
Thanks in advance for the help.
I found one solution.
Basically I just installed scim and scim-anthy (in my case), and edited /etc/profile.d/lang.sh with these lines at the bottom:
#Set the LANG to your preferred locale. #locale -a to see locales supported
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim
export QT_IM_MODULE=xim
Then, reboot the pc, and then input “scim -d” in a terminal.
In the SCIM setup, check every option in the toolbar section (I guess this step is optional but I think the interface is friendlier with those options enabled).
The only disadvantage I see is that you need to call the comand every time you login (or you could just edit the startup scripts).
Hello I have tried the solutions suggested by maill and by a14331990. Sadly neither have worked. Regarding your solution nakas I am too inexperienced to try this. Can you either give more simplified instructions for doing this or can someone give a “newbe solution” for doing Chinese input? BTW I don’t know if anyone else has tried it but the Google pinyin application for windows works pretty good. If only they could have a Linux version…It seems that this SCIM is not the best solution. Any thoughts any good resolution from someone who is using Chinese characters in Open Suse. I would start to rant in Chinese but then I would have to boot my windows machine. 
Wow, seems like a very complex solution. I didn’t have much of an issue.
The scim packages were installed automatically when I selected Chinese as a secondary language. If you’re wanting to type using hanyu pinyin, then making sure scim-pinyin package is installed should be enough.
Then ctrl+space is the default key binding for turning chinese input on/off. I had a little bug in kde that the tray icon wasn’t displayed, even though it was set to. I simply opened the SCIM setup (use ctrl+space to activate SCIM and then click on the menu button). Under Panel–>GTK, deselect, the reselect ‘Show tray icon’ then save the changes. It should show up from now on.
pinyin may not be the default input method. On the menu bar, select the first button and you can select pinyin input from there.
Sorry, not the most clear instructions. You can message me on irc, nick: ‘Benoni’. I’ll be on for the next few hours if you want a hand.
Benoni
Oh, and about SCIM not being the best solution:
IMHO, SCIM rocks. Once you get the hang of it, it’s dead easy. I have it set up so ctrl+space toggles SCIM on/off, shift+space turns jyutping input on and alt+space turns pinyin input on. So I can input Cantonese or Mandarin quickly and easily. Jyutping input is quite rubbish I have to admit. It’s much easier to just use pinyin in traditional mode. Even then it will take a little while for it to learn all the traditional compounds.
However, out of the box, it’s smashing for simplified pinyin.
my 2p,
Benoni
rotfl!Benoni 汉子能写了！谢谢！Smart Pinyin is a great setting to type traditional and simplified Chinese. I agree with you on the bug. In the SCIM setup I also had to uncheck and recheck the “show tray icon” in the GTK panel. In fact I think this bug is what was giving me all of the trouble in the first place. Thanks for pointing it out and hopefully it gets fixed soon! PS thanks for the quick reply these Open Suse forums rock and I think it is the great people in here like you who make OpenSuse a great distro!
Regards
Sorry, just ignore what is below. I miss-read adsum01nl’s post, reading his first, rather than latest post - silly boy
Don’t know what you mean by the configure desktop option. Sounds like a KDE/Gnome control centre? You want to configure the shortcuts through SCIM.
Have you tried ctrl+space? What happens?
What happens if you left-click on the SCIM desktop icon, point to ‘Chinese (simplified)’ and then on ‘Smart Pinyin’?
Benoni
Hi,
Does SCIM have an option for Yale input for Cantonese, or only Jyutping?
Regards,
Barry.
不用谢。And actually, this is the first time I’ve helped anyone in the openSUSE forums in years. I’m have no great part in supporting opensuse users. There are some crazy people on the forums with thousands of posts helping people. They are the people who make opensuse a great distro.
Barry, I don’t know. There is an input method called ‘Cantonese Pinyin’. Dare say it could be yale. If you give me a yale string and its Chinese characters, I’ll check for you. Can’t be bothered looking a string of yale myself, sorry.
Benoni
ngo ge jung man m hou = 我嘅中文唔好
Thanks.
Hey Barry,
Tested that out, and it does indeed seem to be yale. It isn’t a very good implementation though. Unlike the pinyin method, it only supports typing individual characters, not compounds. So, for example, I have to type jung then search for 中 and then type man and search for 文. I couldn’t just type jungman. The other issue is that characters are in a weird order, for example 我 is around five pages down, which is crazy for such a common character. It does order characters by order of usage, so after you’ve used it for a wee while, that problem disappears.
It operates exactly the same as the jyutping input method, useful, but not implemented fully. I’ve always wanted to do some work on the pinyin and jyutping input methods as it doesn’t require good programming skills to adapt the pinyin input method to jyutping and yale. However, I expect it will be a long time before I get around to doing that. Mind you, I’m feeling tempted to try that over the christmas holidays.
hth,
Benoni
Hi,
I’ve noticed the problem of no compound words in many input methods for Canto, the only one I know of is CantoInput; unfortunately there is a huge drawback, which is, it’s a separate Java program, so you have to copy from it’s window and paste wherever you want to write.
I’ll give the Cantonese Pinyin a go when I have time.
Regards,
Barry.
This in fact is the biggest advantage of the Google pinyin input. In my understanding it is constantly updating new compounds against the google translation search database. Therefore it really is a powerful tool for typing Chinese quickly, unless of course you are brave enough to master Wubi and then who needs any of these pronunciation input methods! In meantime I hope they manage to port the app linux in near future for those of us using pinyin it would be a great thing to see: Google Pinyin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Regards,
adsum01nl
Hi,
I tried Cantonese Pinyin, it’s working great.
It’s a shame about the compound words, but typing slowly is better than not at all.
Benoni唔該晒你。
Hi,
This is a scim bug. Try to upgrade it through 1-click-install.
http://files.opensuse.org/opensuse/en/f/f1/Oneclick.png](http://software.opensuse.org/ymp/home:Mingxi_Wu/openSUSE_11.2/scim.ymp)
I’m not sure if it will be in update. :(.
I am also having the compound word problem. I am using the smart pinyin input method but it is only choosing individual characters and is not intelligent enough to suggest common compounds. Any suggestions on a solution?