FREEDOM - Rongjun Mu's Blog » View and input Chinese charactors in an English system

13/10: View and input Chinese charactors in an English system

Category: Apps/Tips

Posted by: murj

About

In this post I will try to explain how to view and input Chinese charactors in an English linux system(I mean the 'locale' is some kinds of English, i.e., en_US.UTF-8 ). Finnaly, you will be able to view and input Chinese in terminal, vim, gedit, mozilla firefox, thunderbird, OpenOffice.org suites and many other applications while all these applications have the original English interfaces. And if you prefer, you can also switch to Chinese interface with the help of 'locales'.

Why Bother

Some time ago I post an entry about how to enable Chinese Input Method with en_US.UTF-8 local. Suprisingly I got a bunch of referer from Google search recently, most of which are comes from outside of my own country China. So I suppose many of you may be instrest on this issue but it's quite questionable whether the previous blog item could do help while it's written in Chinese. So, I retouch this issue and happily present the solution to all of you, in English.

Before we start

The following statements are based on my Debian GNU/Linux(sid) system. Hopefully it will work for Debian GNU/Linux(test) and generally be applicable to any other distros. And please note that I will narrow Chinese to Simplified Chinese on some aspects because in most cases I just play with Simplified Chinese.

I simply assume that you've configured your system properly which only lacks Chinese support. We'll start at this point, here we go.

Install Chinese fonts

Needless to say, you should install Chinese fonts in order to display and input any Chinese characters.

Currently the following Chinese fonts are available in Debian's package repository:

# for Simplified Chinese
xfonts-intl-chinese    
ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp
ttf-arphic-gkai00mp
# for Traditional Chinese
xfonts-intl-chinese-big
ttf-arphic-bkai00mp
ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp

The first three are for Simplified Chinese and the last three are for Traditional Chinese. Considering you may encounter Traditional Chinese as well as Simplified Chinese and nowadays the disk space is no longer concerned too much, I suggest you install all of them.

Install or reconfigure locales

If you've never installed locales, install it: apt-get install locales. Otherwise, dpkg-reconfigure locales will do.

It will ask what locales you wish to build. Select en_US ISO-8859-1, en_US.UTF-8, zh_CN GB2312(or zh_TW BIG5, for Traditional Chinese) and optional zh_CN.GBK and so forth.

You will also be asked which locale you'd like to set as default. You may choose en_US.UTF-8 but this could be overwritten by user's own setting, i.e., 'export LANG=en_US.UTF-8' in ~/.bashrc.

These selected locales will be generated and the default global locale will be set for your system. Check /etc/environment for default global locale, it may contains a line like 'LANG=en_US.UTF-8'.

install a Chinese Input Method

Before this step, you're able to view Chinese characters in Firefox, view Chinese filename or directory name in gnome-terminal or konsole. Now it's time to install a Chinese Input Method.

There are quite a few Chinese Input Methods out there. The most famous and most popular two, especially for Simplified Chinese users, are SCIM(with its various input modules, including scim-chinese, a Smart Pinyin IMEngine for Simplified Chinese, scim-tables, which contains many table based input methods, and many others.) and Fcitx. Both of them are available from Debian's package repository and are being actively developed.

Personally I choose SCIM and its Smart Pinyin ImEngine for my Chinese Input. As of this writing, 'apt-cache search scim' show me a packages' list related to SCIM:

scim - Smart Common Input Method platform
scim-chinese - Smart Chinese Pinyin input server module for SCIM
scim-config-gconf - GConf Config module for SCIM
scim-config-socket - Socket Config module for SCIM
scim-dev - Smart Common Input Method platform, development files
scim-dev-doc - Smart Common Input Method platform, developer documentation
scim-frontend-socket - Socket FrontEnd module for SCIM
scim-gtk2-immodule - A GTK2 IMModule using SCIM for input backend
scim-server-socket - Socket Server module for SCIM
scim-tables-additional - SCIM Input Method table data for additional languages
scim-tables-ja - SCIM Japanese Input Method table data (Hiragana, Katagana, etc.)
scim-tables-ko - SCIM Korean Input Method table data (Hangul, Hanja, etc.)
scim-tables-zh - SCIM Chinese Input Method table data (WuBi, CangJie, etc.)

I installed the core package scim, scim-chinese to meet my Pinyin input method need and scim-gtk2-immodule to enable SCIM in GTK2 based applications.

Once SCIM and some modules you selected were installed, launch a gnome-terminal, first 'export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM', then type 'scim -d' in this terminal. The installed modules will be loaded and scim will started as daemon if everything is good. Now use 'Ctrl+Space' to enable SCIM's IM engine, a status box will be shown somewhere on you screen. Try typing some Pinyins, does it works? If the answer is 'yes', scim is rightly installed.

You may want to make scim start automatically as X starts. Puts the following lines in one of your X initing script:

scim -d    # start scim as daemon
export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE=SCIM        # sets GTK2 IM Module as SCIM

I put them in ~/.xsession, together with another few lines which contains XFce's init command. Thus when I type startx in the console, scim will be started as well as the fabulaous Window Manager - XFce. If you use gdm or kinds of Display Manager, the configuration is analogial.

Need Better Seeing Effect Regards Chinese Characters?

You may have noticed that Chinese characters appears to be obscure. You can improve the situation by adopting some non-free Chinese fonts. Many individual Simplified Chinese linux user employ simsun.ttf from a Microsoft Windows installation for better Chinese characters display.

Currently, a famous hacker from Taiwan, firefly, is working hard to develop some FREE fonts, for both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. ~~We can expected a better, free solution in the future.~~ Now the fonts is available at study-area and linux.org.tw.

This section is to be updated in the future.

Other issues

Install xpdf-chinese-simplified and/or xpdf-chinese-traditional for pdf files which contain Chinese characters.

Anything else?...

Feedback

Feel free to contact me in any form. I'm hearing your comments, suggestions or questions.

Comments

doug wrote:

I run SuSe 9.1, but can't find scim even i have installed it from the distro's cd. may i know how to activate scim in suse 9.1?

thanks

26/11 01:16:46

hooi wrote:

I'm running SuSE9.1, I've used YaST to install SCIM. However, when I type scim -d, error message is shown:
Failed to load socket Server module.

How should I fix this problem?

06/12 15:01:44

home2nest wrote:

Me too. Have been looking for weeks for a newbie explanantion on how to install scim (for simplified chinese) on SUSE 9.1 . Can anyone help?

16/12 18:19:44

ady wrote:

I had the error with sockets.

When I do search in my debian, it gives me

scim-server-socket
scim-frontend-socket
scim-config-socket

So one of them must be it :-)

28/12 14:22:52

DuKefeng wrote:

Thank you very much for your Howto, i tried it on Ubuntu and it's working great so far.

Can i traduct it in French?

14/01 16:01:03

murj wrote:

@DuKefeng: I'm glad this entry does help. You can do whatever you want with this item :)

15/01 15:28:43

dukefeng wrote:

After a few tests on Ubuntu
scim, scim-tables-zh and scim-gtk2-immodule are working great together. Even on OpenOffice, it's working like a charm.

THEN, i start to miss my dear "smart pinyin".

BUT, there is no scim-chinese in ubuntu, i had to get them from debian depot.

AND bad news, it screwed the entire things. Scim is starting well as a daemon, is reacting well with ctrl-space but nothing appear on any applications.

SO if anyone can help on this, that would be great for the foreigner community willing to write in chinese. The goal is to have a full english environment with Scim/Smart Pinyin input working in every apps, OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird to name the most important.

Thanks in advance.

17/01 22:38:38

Eastwind wrote:

Hi dukenfeng ,

I got the same prohlem as you when i use ubuntu
I have read the step by step but nothing appear
there is just the little config box on top .
but i can t let scim appar when i use ctrl + space (or other key combinaison )
How did you let it work on Ooo ? My Open office not let scim open or somewhat like that .
i also follow your tread from Ubuntu-fr forum .
Yeah i can speak french too

If somebody have some solution i m feel also interrested .
Maybe going using fcitx ?

Eastwind - Vent d' Est

18/01 08:15:55

DuKefeng wrote:

@Eastwind and french-speaking ubuntu's user

That's the best i can do:

http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/...

Using Xcin... :|

English version soon. :wink:

19/01 16:06:10

drife wrote:

For ubuntu, I installed fcitx instead of scim, and set LANG=zh_CN.gb2312. Then it works fine, I can input chinese in firefox, gedit...

Hope it helps.

03/02 14:47:27

Sridevi wrote:

Hi, I'm very new in using SUSE OS. i'm supposed to work on some Traditional-Chinese stuffs in our product testing. As of now, it does not support chinese fonts. can you please let me know the steps in whihc i'll 've to download, install fonts & locales to make this work. thx a lot in advance for helping me in knowing this.

17/03 18:25:38

me wrote:

Same for me, the little icon (the keyboard) appeared but ctrl+space never does anything. I tried it for both Ubuntu (french) (using these instructions) and Mandrake 10.1 using rpms and its the same problem for both :(

05/04 13:24:22

bulg wrote:

All this is great stuff. Thanks for the tutorial. The bad thing is I cannot get it to work in Ubuntu 4.10 with its default X - GNOME
I do each step, chinese character appear in openoffice and firefox but when it comes to input nothing happens. Nothing happens with scim, it says its on and it is not working.

And about fcitx - not working again!
gogolino@ubuntu:~ $ fcitx
Ã»ÓÐÉèÖÃXMODIFIERS£¡
ÒÑ¾´æÔÚÁíÒ»¸öÍ¬Ãû·þÎñ³ÌÐò fcitx

this is what I see when I try to run it - a bunch of wierd characters.

One more time big thanks for the tutorial. Hope it becomes a bit more newbie friendly some day.

05/04 20:56:48

意沙包 wrote:

你们好！！
For all those people who like tried scim under ubuntu or another linux but even though everything seemed to be fine nothing happened happened when you pressed ctl-space, I have the solution for you:

You must have
LC_CTYPE=zh_CN.UTF-8
in /etc/environment

otherwise it won't work. LC_ALL or LANG is also good but then your whole system will be in chinese.

Pour tous ceux et celle pour qui scim ne faisait rien lorsque vous tapiez ctl-éspace, il faut rajouter
LC_CTYPE=zh_CN.UTF-8
au fichier /etc/environement

maintent scim marche à merveille (ainsi que smart pinyin) sur Ubuntu 5.04

现在都应该好了！！！
This should solve pretty much everybody's problem here.

Bonne chance! ：D

07/04 04:20:55

意沙包 wrote:

我却有另外一个问题：
I have a windows partition with files with chinese/russian names but they are invisible from my Ubuntu environement, anyone can help?

07/04 04:35:06

Paul wrote:

Hi,

I had problems with some missing character fonts (ie I could see some of the little hex-boxes in between proper chinese characters)...

I installed all the fonts as you suggested, and now your blog in particular looks awful. All the english characters are double-spaced and hard to read, but the chinese fonts look great.

I removed all teh arphic fonts, and the english looked great again (but I had missing chinese characters).. installed any of the font packs like ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp and english was double-spaced again.

Ideas? whats going on here? Many other webpages look fine, but this blog does not!

Thanks

09/04 10:57:59

你 wrote:

意沙包 wrote:
I have a windows partition with files with chinese/russian names but they are invisible from my Ubuntu environement, anyone can help?

意沙包
The following seems to work for me:
mount -t vfat -o codepage=936,iocharset=utf8 /dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d

10/04 11:20:52

DuKefeng wrote:

Ubuntu lovers, see the tutorials for scim in Hoary:

In English
http://www.ubuntuforums.org...

En Français
http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/...

11/04 15:02:38

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FREEDOM - Rongjun Mu's Blog

13/10: View and input Chinese charactors in an English system

About

Why Bother

Before we start

Install Chinese fonts

Install or reconfigure locales

install a Chinese Input Method

Need Better Seeing Effect Regards Chinese Characters?

Other issues

Feedback

Comments

doug wrote:

hooi wrote:

home2nest wrote:

ady wrote:

DuKefeng wrote:

murj wrote:

dukefeng wrote:

Eastwind wrote:

DuKefeng wrote:

drife wrote:

Sridevi wrote:

me wrote:

bulg wrote:

意沙包 wrote:

意沙包 wrote:

Paul wrote:

你 wrote:

DuKefeng wrote:

Add Comment

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