gcin

Gcin is a new generation of Chinese input method server developed by Edward Liu. Gcin supports various input methods and works under most Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most popular Chinese input engines in Taiwan.

Installation

Install the gcin package.

Configuration

Autostart

Use xprofile to execute these commands automatically:

export XMODIFIERS=@im=gcin
export LC_CTYPE=zh_TW.UTF-8
gcin &

Usage

With GNOME/GTK 2 applications

gcin provides a gtk input module, thus all gtk2-based applications are directly supported, there is no need to configure anything after installation (it is not XIM, and gcin is automatically started when needed).

With other applications

1. Set environment locale to use UTF-8, for example:

export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8

Note: You must set the LC_CTYPE locale even if it is the same as LANG, otherwise gcin may not be activated in non-gtk2 programs that use x input.

2. Set XMODIFIERS:

export XMODIFIERS=@im=gcin

gcin uses the name "gcin" by default and you can change this with the environment variable GCIN_XIM in order to run multiple gcin instances, for example:

export GCIN_XIM=gcin_zh
export XMODIFIERS=@im=gcin_zh

Remember that gtk2 applications start one instance of gcin automatically if it does not exist.

3. Start gcin:

gcin &

4. Run your applications! If gcin is killed when your applications are running, it is likely to cause crash or other problems.

Additional notes for Wine/Crossover Office

1. If you run wine or Crossover Office, it is better to use Windows 2000 emulation instead of Windows 98, and you have to start gcin and wine/cxoffice with at least LC_CTYPE=zh_TW.utf8, otherwise wine will not be able to show Chinese correctly.
2. In wine+IE6 with Windows 98 emulation, LC_CTYPE is not enough if you want to input Chinese on the web-pages - you have to set either LANG or LC_ALL to zh_TW.utf8, which slows down wine a lot. However, you can always type Chinese in the location bar or other places and paste it.