Re: Japanese input in an English environment

[bond@cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp]

G'day,


> > Are there any documents which describe how to set this
> > up?  I have tried using my config files from SuSE but they do not
> > work.
> 
> Please install language-env package and read documents in
> /usr/share/doc/language-env directory.  Please note that,
> though there are an English document for Japanese environment,
> the document assumes the users to invoke set-language-env
> which displays messages only in Japanese.  If you feel uneasy,
> please adduser a user to test set-language-env.  (The effect
> of set-language-env command is limited to the home directory
> of the user.)

You should be able to just set the LC_CTYPE to Japanese in your
bashrc, and most things will work.  Note that you must have generated
the correct locale using locale.gen.  I use ja_JP.EUC-JP, which is
fairly standard.

With this, and the correct set up for XWindows and kinput2 I can enter
Japanese in Mozilla, Galeon, gjiten, kterm, ebview, ...  I will append
the relevant bits of my .bashrc, .bash_profile and .Xresources.  Note
also that if you are starting something from a launcher then you may
have to set the environment in the launcher as well: for example I
start the dictionary viewer ebview with:

 'env LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.EUC-JP /usr/bin/ebview' 
 
I leave everything else as just 'C', which means that all my messages
and so forth are in English.

> Please note that Japanese-inputing servers for X Window System
> requires that they are invoked in Japanese locale.  I think
> this is not a requirement from XIM (X Input Method) protocol,
> but all implimentations of Japanese XIM servers requires, as
> far as I know.  Thus, if your words in the subject "English
> environment" means English locale, you might have troubles
> inputting Japanese.
> 
> There is one Japanese-inputtable software regardless of locale:
> emacs and xemacs(-mule).

emacs is you friend!


-.Xresources------------------------------------------------------------
!!! Kinput2
*inputMethod: kinput2
Kinput2*CcWnn.cdef: cdef.kinput2.egg
!!!
*kterm*openIm: on
*kterm*ScrollBar: true

-.bashrc----------------------------------------------------------------
# make it possible to cut and past Japanese
LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.EUC-JP
export LC_CTYPE

-.bash_profile-----------------------------------------------------------
# use kinput2 to enter Japanese
export XMODIFIERS="@im=kinput2" 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would recommend at least the following packages, although there are
many others I have neglected to mention:

#Japanese input
egg, kinput2-wnn, freewnn-jserver
#Dicitonaries (gjiten comes from its own site)
gjiten, edict, kanjidic, xjdic 
# fonts
defoma
# japanese and cjk latex
cjk-latex, dvipsk-ja, xdvik-ja, jtex-bin, dvips-fontdata-n2bk,
dvi2ps-fontdata-ja, gs-cjk-resource, + various postscript fonts




I hope this helped.  
-- 
Francis Bond  <www.kecl.ntt.co.jp/icl/mtg/members/bond/>
NTT Communication Science Laboratories | Machine Translation Research Group