Multi-language support for Korean hangul and english

English Install/Boot/Login
1

All,

I am going to install a computer for multi-language support for English and the Korean Hangul written language. I would like to configure the input from the keyboard to switch from English to Korean. I have keyboard with English and Korean and I would like to configure one of the keyboard buttons to switch the input language similar to how Microsoft multi-language support works. What applications and configuration changes are necessary to implement this.

Thank you

Timothy

2

If you are going to use KDE, there is a keyboard switching program that supports what you want. Make sure when you install that you choose the interface language you want; when you have installed, then go to System settings>Regional>Keyboard layouts and select the alternative keyboard layouts you want to be available. A country flag will appear in the systray and you can cycle through the available layouts by clicking on this or using a shortcut.

I suspect the way it works is completely different from the way Microsoft does things; that is generally the case in Linux because applications use utf-8 which eliminates most of the problems you have with multi-language support in Microsoft.

3

John

Thank you for your support. I will be using the KDE interface. Do you know if their is an easy way to switch the language by setting up a shortcut key. I saw on Ubuntu it use’s IBus and has a configuration screen for this.

Also do you know if their is an easy way to switch the display language with out having to restart XWindows?

Thanks

Timothy

4

AFAIK there is a shortcut you can use instead of the clicking on the flag but it simply cycles through the available keyboards - not a problem if you only have two but can be frustrating if you have four.

You cannot switch the display language, by which I assume you mean the language of the menus, without restarting because that is a system setting; that was why I said you needed to make that choice during installation.

Getting applications to display multiple languages wjthin their files depends on installing suitable fonts; if you don’t have the fonts installed, most applications will accept and store your keyboard input but the best you may get on screen is a series of boxes representing the characters it cannot display. Some will refuse to record a character for which there is no suitable font.

5

AFAIK there is a shortcut you can use instead of the clicking on the
flag but it simply cycles through the available keyboards - not a
problem if you only have two but can be frustrating if you have four.

You cannot switch the display language, by which I assume you mean the
language of the menus, without restarting because that is a system
setting; that was why I said you needed to make that choice during
installation.

Getting applications to display multiple languages wjthin their files
depends on installing suitable fonts; if you don’t have the fonts
installed, most applications will accept and store your keyboard input
but the best you may get on screen is a series of boxes representing the
characters it cannot display. Some will refuse to record a character for
which there is no suitable font.

–
john_hudson

john_hudson’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=1134
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=463951

6

This configuration uses SCIM/SKIM which is not working. I removed the SCIM/SKIM and am installing ibus as another thread in the forum lists known issues with getting SCIM/SKIM to work. Are their any plans to migrate from SCIM/SKIM to ibus for the graphical configuration through KDE system config menu and YaST?

Also does anyone have any instructions for configuring ibus and a shortcut key? I am going to go in and remove the setting changes I already made with SCIM/SKIM and start this over again.

thanks

Timothy

7

I was able to get almost everything working with Ibus. ibus is configured the following lines have been added to my bash.rc:
export GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
export XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus
export QT_IM_MODULE=ibus

ibus currently provides input for KDE apps, KOffice2 etc, firefox also works but I am unable to get korean input in Libreoffice. ibus reports no input window for libre office. I manually changed the local settings in Libre office but it is still only providing english input.

does anyone have a fix to allow ibus to work with libreoffice? I also updated libre to 3.4.2 and it does not work with that version either.

thanks

Timothy