[SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

ConstruKction · 2014-04-01 10:05:27

Good day,

Recently, I finally managed to install Arch (phew!)

As the title suggests, I need to frequently use Japanese Input. I've tried Anthy, however, the prediction is bad and the dictionaries are lacking.
Then I've found mozc (successfully utilized on Mint and Manjaro before) along with IBus , which worked really great!

Running mozc successfully on Arch has been a series of unsuccessful attempts so far. I have browsed tons of pages about people having similar problems, none of the given solutions seem to work for me.
This is what I've done so far:

1. After installation of Arch, I installed Cinnamon and GDM.

2. I've followed IBus installation page. Installed ibus + ibus-qt packages, then installed mozc through yaourt.

3. Put the lines below to ~/.xprofile (Note: .xprofile didn't exist in the first place, so I created it).

export GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
export XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus
export QT_IM_MODULE=ibus
ibus-daemon -drx

and in ~/.bashrc

ibus-daemon -drx

5. Ran qtconfig-qt4, under the "Interface" tab, set ibus as default.

6. In /usr/bin/skype, I put the line below.

export XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus

7. Installed a set of Japanese fonts.

8. Finally, added the Japanese input -> mozc to my IBus input methods.

At this point, Japanese input is supposed to work after a relog. I decided to reboot, though, just for safety.
Yes, IBus did autostart. The tray icon would soon disappear for no reason. After restarting Cinnamon, it would magically re-appear and work with inputs like English/Polish properly. Japanese, too, albeit, not with the desired results.

First of all, the typed text in Japanese will not appear unless I press enter in applications like Firefox, Leafpad, LibreOffice. That is not the desired behavior of a Japanese Input Method Editor. Back on Mint/Manjaro the text would appear instantly, that's how it's supposed to behave.

I use Skype extensively, and the Japanese input doesn't seem to work there at all, even after putting the export line into /usr/bin/skype.

I was hoping somebody here would be able to help me. Thank you in advance!

Last edited by ConstruKction (2014-04-14 11:08:17)

o_caino · 2014-04-01 10:28:26

ConstruKction wrote:

and in ~/.bashrc
ibus-daemon -drx

This line starts a new ibus-daemon replacing the old one every time you open an interactive bash instance. Not sure if this will help, though.

Edit: Check the general tab of ibus-setup, the problem may be "Embed preedit text in application window"

Last edited by o_caino (2014-04-01 10:34:01)

ConstruKction · 2014-04-01 10:41:43

o_caino wrote:

This line starts a new ibus-daemon replacing the old one every time you open an interactive bash instance. Not sure if this will help, though.
Edit: Check the general tab of ibus-setup, the problem may be "Embed preedit text in application window"

Thank you, this has fixed the problem! That's one problem fixed. The only problem that persists now is Skype (or should I say, qt applications in general?), which is (are) refusing to work with mozc.

o_caino · 2014-04-01 12:04:25

As for skype, I remember having some issues just after installing it, but I don't remember if I did something or the problem disappeared by itself. My /usr/bin/skype is unmodified.
For LibreOffice, I had to install the package libreoffice-gnome; without it I couldn't input japanese at all (maybe because I run only a WM).

ConstruKction · 2014-04-02 09:28:29

o_caino wrote:

As for skype, I remember having some issues just after installing it, but I don't remember if I did something or the problem disappeared by itself. My /usr/bin/skype is unmodified.
For LibreOffice, I had to install the package libreoffice-gnome; without it I couldn't input japanese at all (maybe because I run only a WM).

I did as you just mentioned. I left my /usr/bin/skype unmodified. I've gotten the libreoffice-gnome package and have no issues with Japanese typing.

Still, IBus/mozc is very unstable, tray icon still disappears for no reason, from time to time, and typing Japanese in Skype still doesn't work.

At this point, I think I've exhausted every single option that I could find on the internet. I guess I'll have to switch to Windows every time I'll need Japanese.

Thank you for partially solving my problem, though

o_caino · 2014-04-02 10:00:23

What happens when you set xim as the default input method on qtconfig-qt4?
This page offers another possiblity, and he's using Arch, it's worth a try!

stbinan · 2014-04-04 03:09:52

To me, I use fcitx instead of ibus, but Mozc and Pinyin are also out of work. I can use them in iPython qt4 console, so it should not be qt's problem. I guess Skype just has a self-developed input frame and makes third input method uncallable.

BTW I found there are skype plugin for pidgin in aur, you can take a try. Also opening a note on the top of screen and using copy & paste is another solution

ConstruKction · 2014-04-04 07:21:38

Hello,

I went with the suggestion of using fcitx instead of IBus. I once again decided to follow the fcitx Arch Wiki thoroughly. Here's what I've done:

I've installed fcitx-im and fcitx-mozc packages. Before that, I completely removed IBus.

I put this in my ~/.xprofile and ~/.profile

 export GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx
 export QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx
 export XMODIFIERS="@im=fcitx"

After that, I configured my fcitx, and added mozc as my layout for Japanese.

Ran this command, too since Gnome apparently tries its best to break other IMEs.

$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.keyboard active false

Fcitx seemed much, much better than IBus. It's faster and more responsive, however, the Skype lament still persisted, so I decided to test out one more thing, which has caught my eye whenever I ran an application through the console. The error message was saying something about 'falling back to the "C" locale', so I went way back to the "locale" Arch Wiki article, only to find out, that inside my /etc/locale.gen, I had only one US locale. On top of that, the US locale in locale.gen was different than the US locale in /etc/locale.conf.
A silly, yet, overlooked mistake.

After uncommenting my locale, generating a new one and rebooting my system, Skype finally came back to life, and I was able to type Japanese inside its text field.

Thank you again for your input! This case is solved.

Cloudef · 2014-04-04 07:27:52

I would suggest trying uim as well. I use it with mozc-ut and have been happy.
It's the only IME that seems to blend nicely with terminals too.

quequotion · 2014-04-05 13:45:12

Just chiming in to say thanks!

I'd spent an embarrassing amount of time scouring the Internet and trying everything under the sun to get Ibus working with Firefox and Skype.
Sype finally gave in, but Firefox simply refused to cooperate.

fcitx works everywhere!

frostschutz · 2014-04-05 14:56:08

I used scim until it broke for some reason; then ibus until it too broke for some reason; now fcitx, which works fine. For now, anyway.

The only issue I had with fcitx so far is that sometimes it forgets its key bindings; I worked around that issue by making the relevant config file read-only.

I hope that if/when fcitx breaks, one of the alternatives will be back in working order ...

Arch Linux

#1 2014-04-01 10:05:27

[SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#2 2014-04-01 10:28:26

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#3 2014-04-01 10:41:43

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#4 2014-04-01 12:04:25

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#5 2014-04-02 09:28:29

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#6 2014-04-02 10:00:23

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#7 2014-04-04 03:09:52

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#8 2014-04-04 07:21:38

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#9 2014-04-04 07:27:52

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#10 2014-04-05 13:45:12

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

#11 2014-04-05 14:56:08

Re: [SOLVED] Japanese Input using IBus/Mozc

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