CJK Chinese Japanese Korean Input Method configuration using SCIMin Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake - testing needed

[linuxa]

For Kubuntu User, here's what I did to get an English Desktop with
Chinese input via Skim running:



1) Choose English as the installation/distribution default language
(installer crashes midway during installation if Chinese language is
chosen).



2) After Kubuntu installs successfully, go to System -> Language
Support. Choose Chinese from the list. Allow Adept to download the
language pack from the server. After it completes. Choose Chinese as
your default language.



3) Logout, login again



4) SCIM is now your default input frontend. If you want SKIM instead,
open a Konsole window, type:

SKIM -D
Logout, Login. 

Now you've got SKIM. Right click on it in the tray, and choose
configuration, under X Window. Choose to have SKIM start with KDE. If
you skip this bit, SCIM will remain as the default frontend.



5) Regardless of whether you have SCIM or SKIM as your input engine,
you WILL get an error message when your computer reboots with S(C/K)IM
installed. KDE would start and popup an message at maybe the 2nd icon
on the splash window saying:



COULD NOT READ NETWORK CONNECTION LIST

/HOME/<USERNAME>/.DCOPSERVER_MIN-DESKTOP__0


This appears to be SKIM loading itself too early in the KDE startup
process. What you need to do is issue the following commands to delay
it in the KDE startup queue:



CD /ETC/X11/XSESSION.D

SUDO MV 90IM-SWITCH 98IM-SWITCH


Voila, full working English Desktop with Chinese input.



Though I'd imagine you could follow the same steps for Japanese &
Korean inputs.



Hope that helps.

Linuxa



p.s. There's a chance that some of the Chinese characters will be
buggered (yes, proper terminology :P) even after you've selected
Chinese as your default language, and have changed all of the fonts in
System Settings. Buggered meaning that some of the Chinese characters
show up as black dots instead. Qt applications uses DejuVan as the
default font and I guess doesn't have all of the coding pages for all
of the Chinese characters.



What I did was to download qt3-qtconfig, ran qtconfig (Konsole or under
Menu -> System), did a font substitution with DejuVan for one of the
proper Chinese fonts.



I get the feeling that this isn't the best workround though. So if
anyone has any suggestions/feedbacks to any of the above. I'd be glad
if you would post.


-- 
linuxa