I've just installed Kubuntu 8.04 on my new (well second hand) PC. It works just fine. However, Japanese input is a nightmare. I've tried to follow the advice on several websites and asked at Kubuntu forums but I still can't get it to work properly.

Basically SCIM, Skim and Anthy are installed. But the only application they activate in is Konqueror. Nothing else.

If I change my system language to Japanese, then I can get it to work some of the time on most apps. However, if I change back to English, it stops working, even if I start up Skim and select Japanese/Anthy.

Anyone tried Japanese input on the latest Kubuntu? Any ideas?

Safe to say, getting japanese input to work on Linux is HELL. Your problem is probably how the input engines are connected to Xorg (the "server" running your graphical desktop). Unless you find a good guide on a site, or unless you know how to change input engines manually, you're probably not going to be able to do it.

My recommendation: Ask in Ubuntus IRC chat channel... or maybe IRC chat channels of the input engines.

Install Kubuntu 8.04.1 INSTEAD of 8.04.

I recently installed Ubuntu 8.04.1 and installed japanese from the
system menu and japanese works EVERYWHERE, not just specifically
for certain apps. I never got Japanese to work well on 8.04.

So maybe that's your best bet.

I dont have experience with Kubuntu, but in Ubuntu IME works well out of the box. I just had to set it to japanese and let it download the upgrades.

mentat_kgs has a good point, as I have done the same thing. so does chamcham, if you have to use kubuntu.

however, i'd take this as an opportunity for immersion, and go all out with the japanese!

^__^

I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 too and never had any problem installing and making it work on any app.
Also, I think I installed xubuntu (a watered down version) on an old laptop a few months ago, and I solved my problems when I remembered to install the packages "language-pack-gnome-ja" and "language-pack-gnome-ja-base". Of course there is a kde version of them too, so you may want to check them.
Sorry if it's a stupid suggestion, but I can't think of anything else right now...

urpwnd Wrote:however, i'd take this as an opportunity for immersion, and go all out with the japanese!

Nice idea, but other people need to use the computer as well as me...

Tobberoth Wrote:Safe to say, getting japanese input to work on Linux is HELL. Your problem is probably how the input engines are connected to Xorg (the "server" running your graphical desktop). Unless you find a good guide on a site, or unless you know how to change input engines manually, you're probably not going to be able to do it.

My recommendation: Ask in Ubuntus IRC chat channel... or maybe IRC chat channels of the input engines.

I haven't found it's a nightmare. I get scim working perfectly on arch linux every time.

This might help, even though it's the arch wiki: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Scim..._kdm.2Fgdm

You could always try a different window manager (I use xfce or fluxbox, you'd probably be better with xfce if you like KDE) and see where that gets you.

I use Kub 8.04 at home and haven't had any problems with it... 7.10 was a nightmare to get skim working on, though.

My suggestion is to apt-get remove all 3 of those, then install them again. I had to do that on 7.10 to make it work, and then it just magically did.

I haven't used ubuntu for awhile, (or pure kubuntu ever), but iirc isn't there a language support settings gui type thing?
Last time I did that on a friends machine it worked just fine.

Be careful about following the instructions in the arch linux wiki, ubuntu varies a lot from a simpler linux distro

I got a couple more info links from friends at work.
Eventually I got it going, though I have no idea what I did to make it work.
I use Fedora 6 at work and SCIM works fine without Skim.
I guess it's one of those niche areas and so bugs don't get fixed as urgently, and so it bites some people and not others.

Thanks for your support.