Hanyu pinyin input for linux?

[hughitt1]

One of the biggest things that has been holding me back recently from switching over to linux 100% recently has been it's somewhat difficult support for chinese. Now with FC5, installing support for Chinese is a breeze, but there are still several aspects that aren't quite up to par with the windows interface..

1) Anyone know if a Hanyu pinyin input method exists?

2) Anyone know of anyway to update the system fonts to better ones? (the chinese fonts in linux all seem to look 'blurry')

3) Any good dictionary software for linux?

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Thanks

[Battosai]

Hi

I don't usually use Fedora (I use Ubuntu/Debian) so I'm not sure I can help you but

Scim is a great CJK input system .It does almost any known input system (even Shanghainese) and of course pinyin (they call it智能拼音）

I managed to install it once on FC4 but can't remember , probably something like

yum install scim

if you follow the instructions on www.scim-im.org you will be ok

BTW- ylamylam input method that I saw you installed is pinyin based

I dont know much about Chinese dictionaries but try this

Fonts ? I guess you should install some fonts with yum

probably

yum search chinese 

or something...

I'm afraid I'm not much help....

I quite like Fedora actually , I should boot it up more often

It's just that yum is so much slower then aptitute....

[jannetuukkanen]

Stardict:

http://stardict.sourceforge.net/

You have to download and install dictionary files yourself from the site. Deb and rpm stardict packages doesn't contain those.

If you want, Stardict automatically annotates X selection in GNOME (or Xfce4). After you get used to it, you can't live without. However, I don't know how Gtk2 interface integrates with KDE desktop, if that's what you use.

JanneT

p.s. Stardict runs flawlessy in Windows (yak!) too.

[hughitt1]

Cool, thanks guys!

Actually i already have scim, and have used it before in fact, i just didn't realize that 智能拼音 was a hanyu pinyin input method.. (i could have sworn i tried all of em and none were it.. guess i missed one though )

I wil try and see if i can find any better fonts and let you know if i have any luck.

I will check out stardict too, thanks for the suggestion.

Keith

[hughitt1]

Okay,

bringing this one back from the dead.. slightly different question though- Does anyone know of an Big-5 input method that uses hanyu pinyin? I can type in simplified no problem now, but have yet to find a pinyin big-5 input method for linux.

incidentally i'm getting ready to try and install dr.eye dictionary (good windows dictionary) on linux with wine.. wish me luck!

Keith

[flameproof]

SCIM does that in Ubuntu. Easy to setup and toggle too.

[Battosai]

As far as I remember , if you enable Traditional Chinese support in Fedora it should let you type Big5. I tried FC5 before and I'm almost positive you could toggle it with SCIM. I'm sure that in the Fedora forum they'll have better info...

In Ubuntu it's much easier.....

[hughitt1]

Yea.. i'm alright with getting Big5 enabled.. its just that i don't know 注音符號, and as far as i can tell there is not hanyu pinyin input..

[hughitt1]

Okay- i solved the problem. in case anyone is interested there are at least two different ways you can input traditional characters with hanyu pinyin:

1) using SCIM, while using smart pinyin (the hanyu pinyin input for simplified characters in scim), open the scim toolbar. Find the 中 icon on the right side. Click it three times and it should now display 繁. Now you should be able to input traditional characters.

2) install an alternative input method "fcitx" (http://www.fcitx.org/main/).

Keith

[imron]

fcitx is my input method of choice under linux. Small, simple, easy to get working and handles both pinyin and wubi.

[YETIboy1230]

There are mainly two ways to make chinese-character-display under Fedora Core look better by adding Chinese truetype fonts.(My OS is FC4,and both work fine)

1)The easist way is add Microsoft SimSun font.Keep in mind it is copyrighted and you are at your own risk.

Under KDE(Switch to KDE if you are under Gnome),add the font from Windoze file (path:/windows/font) then configure "font" and choose SimSun for speicific places

2)Add some other free font like fireflysung.It may take awhile coz you have to install it with a source file or rpm it as well as change some configration file to let it work fine.

Due to the relatively lenghy description to install and configure it,I don't think it is a good idea to post the detailed document in here.

This instruction is comparatively verse in chinese:)

This is in English from sourceforge.

This is official website about it(Chinese)

Gook luck..

PS:I have worked it out resently to invoke "chinput" for chinese inputing with English language as the choice for the Xwindows and automount USB disk like cdrom in FC4(this one helped by others) ,if you are interested,feel free to text me.

[adamsu]

Did your installation of Dr. Eye work with wine? I have Dr. eye on windows and like it, it would be nice to move it over to linux. Let me know if it was successul or not.

[vintagesound]

Yes, please, report how you got Dr.Eye running, I seem to run into problems after installing (purportedly) successfully: it starts, but would not do anything except for telling me

"Please install Internet Explore(version:4.0 or more) before regist!"

Which I did, even before installing Dr. Eye, using this script from tatanka.com, but to no avail.