Japanese input please help (Page 1 of 3)

It's a breeze under crunchbang too. 
Ja.....

Let me think.

aptitude install scim-anthy language-support-fonts-ja

  I don't know if my page is one of the ones you looked at  http://home.roadrunner.com/~computertai … ninpt.html

It used to be *the* page on Japanese in Linux, but nowadays, there are so many distros that I don't really maintain it, though it's listed (with an incorrect URL) in the scim-anthy README.   
First scim -d
(you probably already did that.)

Ok, then try something like (in any terminal)

XMODIFIERS='@im=SCIM' LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 uxterm

(That's assuming you're in the US.  LC_CTYPE should work with any language and UTF-8.)

Then hit ctl+space.  Anthy should open.  If it's not set to Japanese (there are a bunch of other languages installed), you should be able to select it.  If this works, you can make a little shell script (and add GTK_IM_MODULE which is necessary for some, though not all apps)

#!/bin/sh
XMODIFIERS='@im=SCIM' LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 GTK_IM_MODULE="scim" ${1+"$@"} &

Call it lang.sh and make it executable.

chmod 755 lang.sh

Now you should be able to run, for example

lang.sh firefox

and be able to input Japanese, assuming the application accepts it.  (For example, xterm won't accept it, uxterm will). 
You can change your rc.xml keybindings to use it--for example, if you have a <command>uxterm</command> you can change it to <command>lang.sh uxterm</command>.

My pleasure.  More correct Japanese would probably be (I'm using romaji as I don't have scim running right now)

sukotto san ni ha (ha being wa in this case) tasukete itadaite arigatou gozaimashita.  (Also gozaimasu is seldom written in kanji--mostly we foreigners do it.)    (My first name is Scott, so it's actually sukotto rather than sukottro, but that's not important).

(That's rather polite, especially using itadaite, the same verb base as itadakimasu.) So, to a native Japanese, you'd probably do it that way, tasukete itadaite, and not use kanji for gozaru.  (gozaimasu).

However, as I think we're a fairly casual bunch here, and you don't know that I'm ancient in years (or didn't till just now) doing tasukete kurete (as in kurimasu, ) would be fine. 

Actually, if writing to a native Japanese, you might even make it more polite to the point of exaggeration and use

itsudemo tasukete itadaite. 

(I'm not sure how advanced you are in Japanese, so if this was yokei na osewa, yurushite kudasai.)

As I mention on my page, it seems to depend not only on application, but on the system.  For example, in BSD and CentOS, I need to use LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8 for Openoffice to work.  On  Ubuntu, en_US.UTF-8 works fine with OO as long as I have the GTK_IM_MODULE.   You can also at QT_IM_MODULE for safety in case you use some KDE apps.

(Just as an additional argument in the script, on the same line as the rest of it.)

The GTK_IM_MODULE is, as you've realized, necessary for GTK apps. (Though, you can sometimes skip it if you use LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8).  I left it out of the first set of instructions because it's not necessary for uxterm, but I should have explained it a bit better.

As I said, it can vary, not only between applications, but between distributions and O/S's (e.g., Linux and BSDs.)
Generally speaking the GTK and QT IM_MODULES and LC_CTYPE, as your native language (with UTF-8) and the XMODIFIERS should do it.

There are other GUI centric ways, which I don't use, so I'm not really sure of how they work--e.g., in Ubuntu, I think you can choose input method or something like that from a right click menu.  The way I've given you here, however, should work on all systems with any sort of window manager.

I also tried installing the light chinese input software, but I can never manage to write asian character in firefox or open office. I have all the files installed though. and even after running scim I cannot manage.

Thanks for your help.
I don't know why but I get a Gtk-WARNING **:locale not supported by C library, which is very strange since I have installed all the Japanese language packs. What should I do?
I know it takes time and it is complicated, but do you know if there are there plans to make language selection in cruncheee easy? This is the only thing that worries me about this distro.
Cheers

Ah thank you.  To be honest, I usually use fluxbox, so hadn't realized that.

The Locale warning sometimes has to do with using utf8 rather than UTF-8.  You might even want to do something like dpkg-reconfigure locales and make sure you have the necessary ones.  (I hope I have the command right, I'm in CentOS as I type this, so can't check.) 

Also do locale -a |grep ja_JP and see how they list it, if it's UTF-8, utf8 or whatever.  If the dpkg-reconfigure locales (locale?  Again, can't check at this instant) doesn't fix it, sometimes playing with the case and hypenation of utf-8 will fix it.

Also, it will sometimes work, even if you get that message.  (And sometimes, it won't).

Hi
anyone succeed to install scim ?
I tried as scottro explained, but can't get it work well. I mean I can only launch scim without Japanese input, left click does nothing. (T_T)

tasukete kudasai!! \(ç_ç)/

Hi thanks for answering Scottro
Yep it works fine in the terminal. )
Now i'm stuck at the firefox step, sorry i don't really get it (^_^;;
thanks for your help!

答え、ありがとうございました！！
＿|￣|●

The first two characters were kotae (answer) after that a thank you.  He was just thanking me for the answer. 

You should be able to read Asian characters, go to view=character encoding (or something similar--I'm in opera right now, and look for UTF-8.   

And thank you for clarifying as well, I didn't realize what you meant.   

I would put it in .bash_profile then, which would work each time you log in.  That is, in .bash_profile

export XMODIFIERS='@im=SCIM'
export LC_CTPYE=en_US.UTF-8
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"

Then, when you log in, do scim  -d in a terminal. That terminal can be closed as soon as it starts. (You might be able to do scim -d in .bash_profile as well.)

I haven't done it that way in awhile, but IIRC, that should work.

Is .bash_profile same as .bashrc?