Inputting Hindi Text In Gentoo [solved]

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

People,

As the topic says, I want to be able to type hindi text in Gentoo through scim. If anyone knows how to make this happen, please help me. I tried following the guide on wikipedia but somehow it is not working.
It might be possible that I made a mistake in setting it up, I am just not sure.
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Who shall guard the guards?

OmSai · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 11:29 pm Post subject:

MoonlitSapphire · n00b Joined: 06 Jan 2008 Posts: 46

Did you put the export variables before the exec statement launching whatever desktop environment or window manager?

The 'append' is misleading, exported variables should always come before, otherwise it will start before said variables are exported.

If that is not the problem, then I am not sure what the issue may be with the amount of information you have given.

If the SCIM daemon is running, input methods can be toggled by Ctrl + Space (I think that is the default).
If the daemon is not running, you can attempt to start it with:

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

OK, maybe I am stupid or something but somehow scim is not working for me. I am not sure if I installed it the correct way or not. This is the procedure that I followed to install it:

emerge -av scim-tables scim-m17n
And then this is my .xinitrc

export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"
scim -f socket -c socket -d

exec gnome-session

When I run scim -d I get this:
rahul@wall ~ $ scim -d
Smart Common Input Method 1.4.5

Launching a SCIM daemon with Socket FrontEnd...
Loading simple Config module ...
Creating backend ...
Loading socket FrontEnd module ...
Starting SCIM as daemon ...
Launching a SCIM process with x11...
Loading socket Config module ...
Creating backend ...
Loading x11 FrontEnd module ...
GTK Panel of SCIM 1.4.5

Starting SCIM as daemon ...
SCIM has been successfully launched.

So, there seems to be no problem. But I cannot use it!! Ctrl + Space has no use whatsoever. If I click on the scim icon in the tray I get no choices of language as I should. I really have no idea what is wrong!!
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OmSai · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 2:39 pm Post subject:

Right-click on the icon

SCIM setup > Panel > GTK > ToolBar
- Select "Show:" as "Always" (sometimes I can't use Alt+Space to bring up the window since it conflicts with an existing soortcut)
- Make sure "Show input method icon", "Show input method name" are checked
- Click OK

Close the terminal window you used to launch scim -d before, if you have not already.

Right-click on the icon and exit.
The start scim -d again.
_________________
Gentoo is the stick-shift of Linux.
You work it manually, it has somewhat better performance, but it's really for the fun of it.

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

No changes!

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Who shall guard the guards?

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

Hey Om, can you tell me the exact procedure that you used to install scim, for I am sure that I made a mistake there.

Also, is there any way to check that the file .xinitrc is being used or not.
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Who shall guard the guards?

OmSai · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:23 pm Post subject:

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

OmSai · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:04 pm Post subject:

.xinitrc has the highest priority of being invoked by X, so if you have an .xinitrc in your (user) home directory, it wil be executed.
Maybe you edited root's .xinitrc by mistake?

Installation for Keyboard Input of Indic Languages

Add LINGUAS="hi" to /etc/make.conf
emerge scim-tables
(Logged in as user) nano -w ~/.xinitrc
Add the following lines -

emerge scim-bridge
scim-bridge was masked for me at the time of install, so I unmasked scim-bridge-0.4.14

Nut then I got this error -

Error from scim-qtimm, a dependency of scim-bridge:

ERROR: app-i18n/scim-qtimm-0.9.4 failed.
Call stack:
ebuild.sh, line 1717: Called dyn_setup
ebuild.sh, line 768: Called qa_call 'pkg_setup'
ebuild.sh, line 44: Called pkg_setup
scim-qtimm-0.9.4.ebuild, line 31: Called die
The specific snippet of code:
die "You need to rebuild >=x11-libs/qt-3.3.4 with immqt-bc(recom
mended) or immqt USE flag enabled."
The die message:
You need to rebuild >=x11-libs/qt-3.3.4 with immqt-bc(recommended) or immqt USE flag enabled.

If you need support, post the topmost build error, and the call stack if relevant.
A complete build log is located at '/var/tmp/portage/app-i18n/scim-qtimm-0.9.4/temp/build.log'.

So, to use the first (recommended) method, I added these lines to /etc/portage/package.use

=x11-libs/qt-4* qt3support
=x11-libs/qt-3* immqt-bc

And then re-emerged both Qt 3 and 4
emerge -Dav =qt-3.38-r4 qt
qt-3.38-r4 was the latest stable version for my system; check and use the latest for yours.
I simply use "qt" for qt-4* since portage emerges that by default.
These two rebuilds together took well over an hour on my amd64 +3800, so while it happens go make yourself a cup of tea

Finally manually launch scim from a terminal using
scim -d
However I found that it's not truly a daemon program.
The scim -d process is still somehow bound to the terminal shell, so if you need to quit scim -d, you have to first close the terminal you launched it from and then select SCIM icon > Exit.

_________________
Gentoo is the stick-shift of Linux.
You work it manually, it has somewhat better performance, but it's really for the fun of it.

OmSai · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:07 pm Post subject:

Your /etc/scim/config is the same as mine, so no problem there.

_________________
Gentoo is the stick-shift of Linux.
You work it manually, it has somewhat better performance, but it's really for the fun of it.

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

My qt3 was compiled with immqt enabled, now I am compiling it with immqt-bc. However, qt4 is not installed on my system, do I need to install it?
And do I not need the package scim-m17n?
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Who shall guard the guards?

OmSai · **scim-bridge-0.4.14.ebuild:**

OmSai · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 8:16 pm Post subject:

I couldn't find the Hindi phonetic keyboard layout online, so I made my own to use.
At least till I'm proficient enough not to have to keep referencing it, hehe...

Check it out

http://www.vandanashourie.com/hindi_phonetic_layout.jpg
_________________
Gentoo is the stick-shift of Linux.
You work it manually, it has somewhat better performance, but it's really for the fun of it.

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

Nice one, actually I became quite good with it. If I had something like yours to reference it would have been awesome. I just opened up gedit and tried every damn combination.
Oh, and as a sidenote, scim is working is on my arch install, and because no matter what I do it does not seem to work on gentoo for me I think I would try it when I have time again. New semester starting from monday!

And, many many thanks for your help. And, if you do not mind, can I share your phonetic keyboard with others. There would be many that would love to have that as a reference!
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Who shall guard the guards?

OmSai · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 1:23 am Post subject:

cjubon · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 11:15 pm Post subject:

Hi Om, thanks for your keyboard layout file. I always wanted to have one for the "normal" hindi/devanagari layout, but I was always too lazy to create one. Now I can easily edit your xcf-file :-)

Now, both of you, excuse me to have a silly question: I read this whole thread, and had a look on the scim homepage, but I didn't get the point of why one should need scim for Hindi?

I'm working on KDE, and in order to get an Indic keyboard (although not the Hindi phonetic one), I simply check the "Activate keyboard layouts" checkbox in Control Center > Language and regional settings > Keyboard layout, then select the layouts I want, and click ok. I get a language symbol in my taskbar where I can cycle through my different layouts with a mouseclick. And when typing on the Indic keyboard - no problem with complex characters, not in OOo nor in the Console or whereever...

So, could you explain me what is the point or the advantage of using scim?
Thanks for your answer!

cjubon · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 11:52 pm Post subject:

PS.: rahul, I think that the Gentoo section on the Hindi wikipedia page is simply misleading. Just do what they write in the GNOME or KDE section of that same page, I think that's all you need. I added a note in the discussion of that page and asked them to remove or modify the Gentoo part.

OmSai · Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject:

cjubon · Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 10:46 pm Post subject:

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

Que. Why is the post about SCIM?
Ans. I know Gnome has a hindi keyboard. (Devanagari to be more exact.) But that is an in script keyboard, I want a phonetic one. Hence using SCIM.

Sadly, I have not been able to install SCIM properly, there seems to be something wrong somewhere. And yes, I would see what additions I can provide to the Gentoo wiki.
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Who shall guard the guards?

OmSai · Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 1:46 pm Post subject:

Thanks cjubon and rahulthewall3000.

Guess we'll just have to wait for the gentoo-wiki server to come back up before we can start then...
_________________
Gentoo is the stick-shift of Linux.
You work it manually, it has somewhat better performance, but it's really for the fun of it.

OmSai · Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:11 am Post subject:

trumee · Guru Joined: 02 Mar 2003 Posts: 551 Location: London,UK

Om. Thanks for the layout. But how do you get half letters? I tried the letter 'f' on the keyboard, but I get the full character rather than the half character.

OmSai · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 9:14 pm Post subject:

trumee,

You have to use the 'f' after the letter you want to halve.

For example, to type patni (पत्नी), you have to use the letters p-t-f-n-I

Also one other thing to watch out for is pressing-and-releasing the <shift> key, which toggles between english and hindi.
I'll update the -wiki keyboard image with that warning.

HTH
_________________
Gentoo is the stick-shift of Linux.
You work it manually, it has somewhat better performance, but it's really for the fun of it.