Monday 3 June 2013

Installing UIM on Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon ("Olivia") for Japanese IME

In Linux Mint 15 - 64 bit with Cinnamon, the Ibus Input Method Editor does not work.
When you activate the IBus by clicking:

Menu -> Preferences -> Keyboard Input Methods

the following Alert Box pops up.
Clicking the "Yes" Button does as the same Alert Box will continue to pop up.



Activating the IBus Daemon from the terminal yields:



While it's nice to have IBus working for Japanese input, it is not possible in this instance and being Linux we have to find an alternative solution and that solution is to install UIM through the following steps.

1. Install uim and uim-anthy by searching through Software Manager, Synaptic Package Manager or through the terminal. These instructions uses the terminal for installation.
At the terminal type:

sudo apt-get install uim uim-anthy


2. Add language support

  • Menu -> Preferences -> Language Support
  • Click "Install/Remove Languages" Button
  • Select Japanese
  • Click "Apply Changes" Button
  • Select "uim" at the "Keyboard input method system:" Drop down box



3.  Setting up UIM

  • Menu -> Preferences -> Input Method
  • If there are more than one Input Method option, select the uim one with the blue icon.
  • Change settings to your liking then click "OK" Button.




4.  Set Keyboard Input Method

  • Menu -> Preferences -> Input Method
  • If there are more than one Input Method option, select the one with the keyboard icon.
  • Click Yes, Yes and OK and it will generate the .xinputrc file in your Home folder
5. Logout and Log back in or reboot the computer if necessary

6. Test with Gedit, Mozilla or Chrome and LibreOffice Writer. From the above settings, press space to switch between direct input method or Anthy (UTF-8). 

2 comments:

  1. Mine is still typing in English...

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    Replies
    1. Sometimes you have to reboot instead of Logging out and Logging back in.

      You should have a keyboard icon on your system tray and if you click on it, there should be Japanese-Anthy there. Press the space bar to change between English & Japanese.

      The other thing I could think of is that if you look at step 2. in the "Language" Tab look for "日本語' on the list even if it's greyed out, click on it and drag to the top of the list. It should work after you logout and log back in again but from my experience it's better to reboot.

      Apart from that you haven't given me much information to go on, so I can't help you much.

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