Chinese Language Support (Solved)

[brightness]

Hi all,

I am a new user of PcLinuxOS. I was a Mint user and initially tried out PCLOS Openbox. I really love this distro but unfortunately some issues couldnt be solved. I have posted my questions on the Openbox forums but never get a reply.

Eventually I started to try PCLOS Kde 2011-09. But I have the following problems. Any kind help is much appreciated.

1. I have successfully installed gcin and set it as the default IM. However, I cant use it to type Chinese Traditional. If I type chi in the K menu search, the output are square boxes. In all other places the output is just English.

2. Only Firefox can display Chinese. In all other places the fonts are tiny boxes.

I would like the system language to be English while supporting Chinese characters (esp in File Manager and web browsers) and Chinese Traditional input by press CTRL+SPACE (I prefer Changjie IME).

Thanks.

[Phil]

Hi brightness,

I do not really know the answers. Perhaps if there is someone else using gcin they could help.

If you are getting square boxes rather than Chinese characters this suggests you need some Chinese fonts installing. Start synaptic and do a search for say Chinese and see what looks possible. Install whatever looks sensible and retry.

Perhaps you can have a read through the documentation for gcin, it may be in the directory /usr/share/doc.

[pinoc]

Hi brightness,

and you already ran addlocale, right?
regards,
-p.

[brightness]

Hi pinoc

I have already tried the addlocale thing and it does not work. I updated my system, used addlocale to add Chinese Traditional, logged out and then logged in, but nothing has changed. Also, I keep reading on the Web that in the regional setting dialogue box there is an "add language" button but in my system there is not the button.

Thanks.

[pinoc]

Hi pinoc

I have already tried the addlocale thing and it does not work. I updated my system, used addlocale to add Chinese Traditional, logged out and then logged in, but nothing has changed. Also, I keep reading on the Web that in the regional setting dialogue box there is an "add language" button but in my system there is not the button.

Thanks.

does not work does not help me to understand what your problem is. You ran addlocale on OpenBox, or on KDE (mini or normal version), and was your install fully updated before running addlocale?
I need more and precise info, else I can not reproduce and consequently help with your problem.
-p.

[brightness]

Hi pinoc

This is what I did:

1. The system is PCLOS 2011-09 KDE (full version).
2. Fully update my system (synaptic > reload > Mark all upgrade > Apply > OK).
3. I am using my own account (other than Root and Guest, but I set the primary group of the account to "Root"). Whenever prompted for root password, I would enter the default password root.
4. On the desktop, I click on the Localisation Manager icon. It says... checking internet connection...then displays a list of languages. I choose Chinese (Traditional) > OK (or Apply). It says ... reloading packages ... testing if your system is updated etc (I am using Win7 now, so cannot remember the exact wording).
5. After it is done, logout and login.
6. Everything is exactly the same as before, no Chinese. I already have gcin installed, but pressing CTRL+SPACE has no effect. I can search in the PC Menu for "gcin" (I am using the application launcher menu instead of the classic menu), there are 2 results: gcin setup and run gcin. I click on run gcin, the gcin icon appears in the notification tray. I right-click on the icon and choose Changjie, but wherever I type the output is English. I have already installed quite a number of packages of Chinese fonts.
7. Go to Control Centre > Manage system localisation. The list does not have Chinese, only Burmese, English (Canada), English (US), English (NZ) etc. I click on Eng (NZ) and next. In the long list, there isn't China or Taiwan, the only one I can find is HK SAR, but choosing HK has no effect at all.
8. Go to Configure your desktop > locale. In language/region, under the language tab, there is only English(US) listed, no "add language" botton.

Thanks.

[pinoc]

ok, found the bug (chinese locale for firefox no longer exists  ). Will update and upload addlocale 4.0-5 soon.
-p.

[pinoc]

Hi brightness,

now you have 2 options:
1) search in Synaptic for firefox-zh_TW, and if it is not there yet then wait a bit until your repo has synched. Once it is there you can run addlocale 4.0-4.
2) wait for addlocale 4.0-5 (should be in the repo within the next 3 days) and run that when you will find it in the repo.

regards,
-p.

[brightness]

Hello,

I have finally sorted it out. I followed the instructions on this page: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-277696-start-0.html

However, after following the exact instructions, I can’t start Konsole. Every time I start Konsole it says “KDE is already running”. So finally I sorted it by removing the last two lines of code. After that, I can type Chinese in any applications without affecting the system language of my PCLOS KDE (full edition).

So, this is what I did:

Install gcin (search for it in Synaptic, install all three packages)
Install several Chinese font packages.

Add this code to the file ~/.bashrc
export LC_CTYPE=zh_TW
export XMODIFIERS="@im=gcin"
export XIM=gcin
export XIM_PROGRAM=gcin

Logout and login again. Now it works like a charm. However, I have another problem now – when typing Chinese gcin does not display the key strokes that I am entering as it normally would . Because I am an experienced typist it does not really matter. But I would like to solve this problem and I am going to open another thread named “gcin problem”.

Thanks you all for your assistance.

P.S. Another problem is that Dolphin or Konquere can not properly display file names with Chinese characters. Any idea to solve this prob?

[pinoc]

Hi brightness,

some time ago we had quite some discussion on how to get scim working properly from a chinese localized PCLinuxOS. The findings of this discussion were implemented in addlocale. For this reason I strongly recommend to run addlocale on your system, it will customize your .bashrc and autostart scim appropriately to get all working properly. The scim settings are similar to the gcin settings you report. I don't know if gcin or scim is better but the addlocale settings for scim work well, so you could give this a try.
regards,
-p.

[brightness]

Thanks pinoc

What do you mean by "chinese localized PCLinuxOS"? Does it mean the system is in Chinese? I would prefer the system language to be English while being able to just INPUT Chinese.

Also, any method to display Chinese in Dolphin?

Thanks again for your kind kindness.

[pinoc]

Thanks pinoc

What do you mean by "chinese localized PCLinuxOS"? Does it mean the system is in Chinese? I would prefer the system language to be English while being able to just INPUT Chinese.

Also, any method to display Chinese in Dolphin?

Thanks again for your kind kindness.

you will get Chinese display in Dolphin after adding chinese via addlocale. After that you can use addlocale again and revert to the default en_US system. You will then have an english system but with all required packages to use chinese input, especially in KDE. However, not everything may work as expected because on a english system you will have english as the default language, surprise...  And for this reason some things appear in English and not in Chinese. You can not have both.
hope this helps nevertheless 
-p.

[brightness]

Hi pinoc

I have just run addlocale and at the very end it says it failed to fetch some packages. It says for details refer to a log, which is as follows:

coreutils-doc enca glib-gettextize glibc-i18ndata intltool libgdata-i18n perl-Text-CharWidth perl-Text-WrapI18N php-translit locales-zh fonts-ttf-droid fonts-ttf-chinese taipeifonts bg5ps zh-autoconvert zhcon scim-pinyin scim-tables-zh scim-chewing scim-bridge-gtk scim-bridge-qt4 scim-fcitx fcitx ttfprint fonts-ttf-wqy-microhei fonts-ttf-wqy-zenhei gcin-qt4 kde4-l10n-zh_TW docbook-style-xsl docbook-dtd412-xml docbook-dtd42-xml docbook-dtd43-xml docbook-dtd44-xml docbook-dtd45-xml man-pages-zh firefox-zh_TW gimp-help-zh

I am gonna logout and login to see what happens now.

[brightness]

Hello,

I have installed scim and it works like a charm. Gcin prob solved (as I am no longer using it ).

However, Dolphin still can't display Chinese characters. Also, addlocale does not make any difference (I fully updated my KDE full edition system before the process, please see my posts above).

Any ideas please? Thanks.

[pinoc]

hi brightness,
nothing will happen. Your current repo seems to not have synced properly. Just run addlocale without issues on a fully updated KDE and using the repo ftp.ch.debian.org. Please open Synaptic, click on Settings -> Repositories. De-select your current repo and enable (set a tick mark to) the repo mentioned. Ensure to have only one (1) repo enabled! Then update your system. After that close Synaptic and run addlocale again. Should work.
good luck,
-p.