System Configuration

System-Wide Configuration

If you do a fresh install and choose CJK or Amharic for the system language, there is actually nothing to do. All you need to do is log in to your user account and press

. SCIM input methods for your language are ready for use.

What does the trick is the following lines in /etc/sysconfig/i18n.

GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
QT_IM_MODULE=scim
XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"
XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM

Those lines are automatically added to the config file if you choose CJK or Amharic when you install/upgrade the distribution or run localedrake as root and select SCIM as the input method.

Per-User Configuration

If your system is not configured to use SCIM globally or you use other language than the system default, the above-mentioned lines should be present in /home/yourname/.i18n. In this case, run localedrake as a non-privileged user and select SCIM as the input method. /home/yourname/.i18n overrides /etc/sysconfig/i18n.

Unicode Locale

All SCIM input methods work in GTK+ based applications (GEdit, Firefox etc.) and those which support Qt immodule (Kate, Konqueror etc. in 2006) regardless of your locale settings. However, they are filtered by LC_CTYPE in applications which use the XIM protocol (OpenOffice.org 1.1 etc.) i.e. if it is set to ja_JP (=ja_JP.eucJP), you can only use Japanese input methods.  If you want to use SCIM input methods for more than one language in all applications, a Unicode locale is recommended.

Some languages use Unicode by default but others still use a legacy encoding in Mandriva Linux. To make sure that Unicode will be used for your language, you need to do one of the following.

• Check 'Use Unicode by default' at the language selection when you install/upgrade the distribution.
• Run localedrake and check the same option in Advanced mode. (available since LE 2005)
• Manually add '.UTF-8' to locale names as in en_US.UTF-8 in /etc/sysconfig/i18n or /home/yourname/.i18n.

If you use a different UTF-8 locale than en_US.UTF-8, you need to edit /etc/scim/global or ~/.scim/global as follows.

/SupportedUnicodeLocales = en_US.UTF-8,fr_FR.UTF-8

Qt-immodule

Mandriva/Mandrake Linux releases prior to 2006

The installer/localedrake sets QT_IM_MODULE=scim but it is not in use in 10.1 and 2005LE because the Qt-immodule patch is disabled in those releases. Therefore, scim (or skim) interacts with KDE/Qt apps via XIM protocol.

Mandriva Linux 2006

Qt-immodule support is enabled in 2006, and scim-qtimm will be installed by default if you select KDE as your desktop environment.