Japanese on Linux

[Warren Togami]

It is not difficult to use Japanese input support in Red Hat 7.2, but it is
a little buggy.  Unfortunately there is very little documentation available,
so it took me lots of experimentation to create an easy way of using it.

I created a little script called "ja" that I put into /usr/local/bin
#!/bin/bash
kinput2 -canna &
LANG=ja_JP XMODIFIERS="@im=kinput2" $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7

Then I make a menu option "Japanese Mozilla" that launches "ja mozilla".

This allows me to use SHIFT-SPACE to type Japanese into text fields on web
pages.  The interface of kinput2 is similar to but not exactly like Windows
IME.

Japanese input works great in Konqueror, Opera, Netscape, StarSuite 6.0
(StarOffice 6.0 for Japanese), KMail (kinda like Outlook Express), but it is
slightly buggy in Mozilla and very broken in Evolution.

----- Original Message -----
From: "John S. Johnson, III" <jsj at amagata.com>
To: <warren at togami.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 9:46 AM
Subject: Japanese on Linux


> Warren,
> Hello. I saw your post on the linux network for the school. I
> was curious about the Japanese support that you mentioned. I am about to
> get started with some linux boxes(RH7.2) and use mostly gnome. How hard
> is it to get Japanese character support? Is it similar to MS's
> support(not their global IME, but actual native Japanese that will even
> allow Japanese file names, etc)?  The reason I ask is that I use mostly
> Win2K pro because it handles Japanese text and files natively(via
> Multilanguage pack). I'd like to switch to Linux if it could work
> equally as well. Thanks in advance!
>
> --John Johnson
> --Amagata USA, Inc