HOWTO - SCIM and Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

October 22nd, 2007 at 11:57 · Filed Under Call Me a Geek, Computing, HOWTO, Hacking, Linux 

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10Ubuntu 7.10, code named “Gutsy Gibbon”, has been released. I just finished upgrading from Feisty Fawn (7.04) to Gutsy Gibbon. The upgrade (downloading, unpacking, removing, installing, configuring and cleaning) took about 6 hours to complete.

The upgrade was smooth and without any problems except it broke my scim. I have exhausted the search on Internet for a fix but was disappointed. So, I tried to experiment with a few methods based on the information I had on the Internet and came up a work around for this problem.

Referring to my Chinese Input HOWTO here, I assume you have installed scim in Feisty Fawn (7.04) and later upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon (7.10).

  1. Goto System -> Preference -> Sessions. Delete the “Input Method” as created in my previous HOWTO.
  2. Uninstall and install again scim and all suggested packages.
  3. Click on menu: System -> Preferences ->Sessions
    • Click Startup Program Tab then [New] button.
    • Name: Input Methods
    • Command: scim -d
    • Click [OK] button
  4. Logout and login again.
  5. Go to System -> Administration -> Language Support
    • Select your language(s) support. In my case, Chinese and Japanese.
    • Check the box at the bottom, Input Method, to activate complex characters input. Apply, uncheck it, apply and check again and apply then quit.
    • Restart Language Support to make sure the box is checked.
  6. Logout and restart your system.
  7. Login and launch any application, e.g. gedit or Terminal. Right click and select “Input Method” and check “SCIM Input Method”.
  8. Now click on the “Input Method” tray icon on the top left of your screen to choose your desired language support and input method.

Now, you should be able to switch input method in some applications such as Terminal or gedit. It still does not work on every applications such as Open Office. To activate scim for every applications, use the command line (or Terminal):

  1. Check your locale: 
    
$ locale | grep LANG=

    The answer would be something like below, which is in my case:

    
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  2. Now, with the following command, insall scim-qtimm and tell your system you want to use scim for your input method in your locale: 
    
$ sudo apt-get install scim-qtimm
$ im-switch -z en_US -s scim
  3. Logout and login again and start Open Office. You should now able to select your input method in every applications.

This should also work (with instructions from my previous post here) if you have a fresh installation of Gutsy Gibbon. Please let me know if this works for you.

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Comments

13 Responses to “HOWTO - SCIM and Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon”

  • charles gruben on October 23rd, 2007 10:02 1

    Thanks for the wonderful tips. I finally got my chinese im working.

    charles

  • Jon on October 24th, 2007 14:26 2

    Thanks Adrian.

    I have used ubuntu and chinese/scim a lot in the past. But I set up ubuntu gutsy on a new computer from the cdrom. It was setup as a en_US system, and I could not get scim setup correct.

    Your tip to use the command
    “im-switch -z en_US -s scim”
    finally did it, forcing X to use scim for xinput.

  • haha on October 28th, 2007 5:34 3

    If it doesn’t work, you can also try this:

    用adept安装的:
    skim
    skim-scim-pinyin
    scim-bridge-client-gtk
    scim-bridge-client-qt
    im-switch

    需要的其他包adept会自己装。

    然后，开一个终端，运行：
    im-switch scim-pinyin

    退出后重新登录。

    im-switch所能选择的选项，在/etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d下。
    查看scim-pinyin发现，在装了scim-bridge后，使用scim-pinyin，则gtk的输入模块是scim-bridge，而qt的输入模块大概是scim-qtimm吧。

    如果用
    im-switch -s scim
    或者
    im-switch -s scim-immodule
    则锁住屏幕后解锁时无法输入密码。

  • Nicolas on October 28th, 2007 17:08 4

    If you are installing from scratch and not updating, you should follow the “quick setup” section at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SCIM

  • 赵健华 on January 11th, 2008 10:03 5

    谢谢你。我升级我到7.10之后，SCIM就不能执行了。我可慌了！好在看到你的方案…谢谢。

  • Adrian Hoe on January 11th, 2008 11:07 6

    谢谢支持。

    不知何故，7.10升级程序包没有做好这一点。希望下一版本的升级程序包能妥当处理。

  • Lander on January 29th, 2008 18:38 7

    Hi all, in Ubuntu 7.10, if your apt echoes “scim-pinyin … unavailable”, please select & try another “Software source” which means switching to a new origin server. If that still doesn’t work, try to enable check-box at that sw-source selecting dialog.
    Enjoy!

  • Adrian Hoe on January 29th, 2008 18:49 8

    Lander,

    I faced the same problem and tried a solution similar to yours but it did not work. But anyway, thanks for sharing. At least we know it works in some cases.

  • Ben on April 10th, 2008 9:24 9

    Thanks for the post. After scratching my head so hard, I couldn’t thank enough for your tips.

    ben

  • Eric Lin on June 17th, 2008 6:21 10

    There is another simple way:

    sudo apt-get install scim-bridge
sudo vim /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim

    then find and change

    
GTK_IM_MODULE=xim

    into

    
GTK_IM_MODULE="scim-bridge"

    Restart system. SCIM should works fine with all applications. Maybe you will need start SCIM manually by

    
scim -d

    Hope it helps

  • Fong on July 17th, 2008 14:22 11

    Hello Adrian,

    Thanks for the post. It helps a lot. BTW, great blog. Keep it up.

  • Katy on August 16th, 2008 18:35 12

    Thanks. I am now able to input Chinese character on my Linux box. I went to Apple store. Unlike Linux and WIndows, the Mac is really neat in this area. I will consider to invest in a Mac.

  • 郑小华 on August 21st, 2008 14:17 13

    谢谢。我已经可以用中文输入了。

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