Fcitx-anthy Request (for Japanese Users)

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Apropos of the discussion this week with the person trying to get Chinese input going on CentOS, I filed a request for enhancement with Fedora‘s EPEL
to add fcitx-anthy as a package. Currently, I’m able to get it working with the Fedora 20 rpm, but it would be nice to not have to search for it.

It’s been assigned (I’m not sure how meaningful that is, depending upon the assignee’s free time), but anyone who would like to add their support to the request can view the bug at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id71924

17 thoughts on - Fcitx-anthy Request (for Japanese Users)

  • Which would also be useful, especially as fcitx-pinyan is already available. I prefer the manual way because I’ve gotten so used to it, but suspect the vast majority who want to use it as a desktop would much prefer the gui tool.

  • Scott, I am back at this again. I am able to switch between Chinese and two western languages in terminal sessions but not in GUI applications such as LO, Thunderbird, Firefox… Only the default language works in these GUI applications.

    What setting in fcitx might I be missing?

    Thanks.

  • Well, I’m not the expert, especially at Chinese.
    I do remember in an older version of FreeBSD, to get it to work in firefox, I would use LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8 firefox

    from a terminal, and it would then work. I never figured out why (it worked with other GTK apps such as libreoffice. Hrrm, I don’t think I tried in Thunderbird.

    Ah, also, in my .xinitrc (I boot into text mode then run startx I have, above the line calling the window manager

    export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8

    Do you have fcitx-gtk2 and fcitx-gtk3 installed?
    I repeat, I’m not an expert on this, my skill is in googling and finding out how others got it done, then just copying that and summarizing it. :)

  • Thank you, tried that but no difference. I have temporarily deactivated Chinese and am just trying to switch between two western languages. Again, this works fine in a terminal session but not in any GUI program I tried, including firefox, thunderbird, geany.

    I do have both fcitx-gtk2 and fcitx-gtk3 installed.

    I suspect there may be some configuration setting I have missed but since there is no graphical configuration utility it’s hard to figure out what might be wrong by just looking at the several configuration text files.

  • Interesting, that seems to work! Will check it out more tomorrow. However, it seemed to work only for firefox (that you have on the command line), it did not work for thunderbird or geany.

    The Big5 is likely not correct but I will check tomorrow.

    Thought: I do have XMODIFIERS and GTK_IM_MODULE set in .bashrc:

    export GTK_IM_MODULE

  • In the FreeBSD install where this was an issue in firefox, I had them in
    .bash_profile, I think. Or maybe .bashrc. :) I don’t remember. But the only thing I remember being an issues was Firefox, and the only variable I
    had to add at the time was changing LC_CTYPE from English to Japanese.

    Try .bash_profile, (and then log out and log in.)

  • Still struggling here. Adding them to .bash_profile does not make any difference. I /think/ I need to put them somewhere so all GUI programs get initialized. Spending a couple of minutes on the ‘net it seems .xinitrc i my home directory should be suitable. This file did not exist so I created it and made it executable.

    Based on my googling, this is what I came up with:

    #!/bin/sh

    export GTK_IM_MODULE

  • I have done some experimenting:

    – switching between two western languages and pinyin works well in a terminal window

    – I just discovered all of this also works well in a note-type field in KeePassX BUT

    – none of it works in firefox, thunderbird, libreoffice or geany

    My setup is thus partly correct and I draw the conclusion that KeePassX is compiled using a different window library than the other four applications?

    Can anyone shed light on this?

  • Seems geany uses Qt and the other four use GTK libraries. My problem is likely related to this, have to search for setup issues related to GTK.

  • It might be worth creating a new user and seeing if it works for said user.

    I don’t know if you mentioned what desktop you use, but it might also be worth, with said new user, trying openbox (available from EPEL) or some other less intrusive desk environment to see if there’s something Gnome is doing.

  • I am pleased to report that I now have fcitx working in terminal windows, geany, firefox, thunderbird and LibreOffice, i.e., my main apps. I am now able to switch between two western keyboards and pinyin.

  • One more issue: while I can now switch between the two western keyboards and pinyin in the applications I use, as soon as I move between entry fields the keyboard selection resets to the default. Very annoying when you are using a second-choice western keyboard in an application and the keyboard selection constantly resets as you move between entry fields.

    The pinyin setting, on the other hand, remains as chosen which is the expected behavior. I use the default Ctrl-Space to activate/deactivate pinyin and right Ctrl-right Shift to move between the keyboard settings.

    Given the absence of a graphical configuration tool for fcitx in CentOS I am not sure where/how I can change the behavior for keyboard selection so that it does not change within any given application. Scott, do you know?

    Thank you.