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Candidate for Deletion |
im-ja
Why im-ja instead of SCIM
Features im-ja has over scim:
- faster
- more configurable
- can use a number of backends
- simpler to install and use
Also, SCIM contains many bugs which are not likely to be fixed any time soon, whereas im-ja just works. For example, I tried entering the text "nihongo" with SCIM and I got back a mish-mash of Kanji, hiragana and latin characters, whereas with im-ja it immediately converts my typing into hiragana, and will select an appropriate sequence of kanji upon pressing space. See this illustration of scim and im-ja use.
Installing
The im-ja homepage is at http://im-ja.sourceforge.net/. Ubuntu packages can be installed using gdebi from http://im-ja.sourceforge.net/binary.html. You will also need to install a wnn server. This can be done with the following command:
sudo apt-get install freewnn-jserver
You may also need to add the following two lines to /etc/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules if they're not already there:
"/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/immodules/im-ja.so" "im-ja" "Japanese" "gtk+" "/usr/share/locale" "ja"
Check that this is the right path for im-ja as it may have been updated since writing this documentation.
Using
Any newly-launched GTK+ program will now have "Japanese" listed as an input method. You can select this by right clicking on a text entry and selecting Input Method -> Japanese.
Type away and your text will be input at first in hiragana. This can then be converted to an appropriate representation by pressing the space bar.