SCIM

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The SCIM platform (Smart Common Input Method) provides methods for entering writing systems that are too complex for the usual Unix keyboard handling mechanisms.

Supported Writing Systems

SCIM supports the following IMEs on Linux and other forms of Unix. Although IMEs are not essential for entering text in most alphabets, they add capabilities that cannot be provided on simple one-character-per-key layouts. Among other benefits, this makes it possible to enter accented letters that have no Unicode code points, where it is necessary to provide a sequence of Unicode code points to an application in order to represent a single letter. Accented letters are encoded in Unicode only if they were in some previous standard.

English/European

Adds combining characters to any ASCII keyboard layout, including Dvorak. IMEs are provided for English, Croatian, Slovak, Sampa, and Swedish.

Arabic

Includes Arabic, M17N-ar-kbd, UIM-m17n-ar-kbd keyboard layouts for Egyptian Arabic.

Ethiopic/Amharic

Amharic and other languages of Ethiopia are written in a syllabary with too many symbols to fit on a simple keyboard. However, it can be typed in an IME. One types a base syllable, then a vowel, to get the syllable with the consonant from the base syllable plus the specified vowel.

This is the basic keyboard layout.

` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 [ ]
   ቅ ው እ ር ት ይ ኡ ኢ ኦ ፕ [ ] \
    አ ስ ድ ፍ ግ ህ ጅ ክ ል ፤   
     ዝ ሽ ች ቭ ብ ን ም ፣ . /

The syllable and vowel letters combine as in the following example.

For   Type
ታ     ት አ
ቶ     ት ኦ
ተ     ት እ
ቱ     ት ኡ
ቲ     ት ኢ

Cyrillic

This is called a phonetic layout, where the letter on most keys is the closest Cyrillic letter in sound to the Latin letter on the same key in QWERTY. But it is not simply a keyboard layout. Letters not on the keyboard can be typed as combinations. For example, the sequence 'ыо' results in 'ё', and similarly 'ыу' results in 'ю'.

` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 [ ]
   я в е р т ы у и о п [ ] \
    а с д ф г х й к л ; 
     з х ц в б н м , . 

SCIM includes six other Cyrillic layouts for Russian, and others for Serbian.

Alphabets and Languages of India

Inscript and other keyboard layouts for nine writing systems of India, used for hundreds of languages.

• Assamese
• Bengali
• Gujarati
• Hindi (Devanagari alphabet)
• Kannada
• Malayalam
• Oriya
• Punjabi (Gurmukhi alphabet)
• Tamil
• Telugu

Nepali

Written in Devanagari. Traditional and Romanized input is supported.

Greek

Two IMEs provided.

Iranian

aka Persian or Farsi. Two IMEs provided.

Tibetan

Two IMEs provided.

Hebrew

Two IMEs provided.

Cambodian

Two IMEs provided.

Laotian

Four IMEs provided.

Thai

Four IMEs provided.

Inuktitut

Again, a base keyboard layout with combining rules.

` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
   ᖅ  w e ᕐ ᑦ ᔾ ᐅ ᐃ ᐅ ᑉ [ ] \
    ᐊ ᔅ d ᕝ ᒡ ᔅ ᔾ ᒃ ᓪ ; 
     z x ᒡ ᕝ b ᓐ ᒻ , . /

Example: ᔾ ᐅ results in ᔪ.

IPA

Keyboard layout with combining rules.

` 1 2 ʒ 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
   q w e r t y u i o p [ ] \
    a s d f g h j k l ; '
     z x c v b n m , . /

Note that the character 'ʒ' on the 3 key is not a 3, but U+0292 LATIN SMALL LETTER EZH.

Example: 'sh' results in 'ʃ'.

Vietnamese

` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =
   q w e r t y u i o p [ ] 
    a s d f g h j k l ; 
     z x c v b n m , . /

Examples:

• 'dd' results in 'đ'
• 'DD' results in 'Đ'

Vowel plus character(s) at left results in accented vowel.

• ' áéíóúý
• ` àèìòùỳ
• ^ âêô
• ^? ẩổ
• ^' ấếố
• ^` ầềồ
• ? ảẻỉỏủỷ

Japanese

• Hiragana （romaji-hiragana conversion）

Typing a consonant key produces the syllable with that consonant plus a. Typing a consonant followed by a different vowel in most cases produces the syllable with the consant-vowel combination indicated. Some syllables are spelled in other ways, in an attempt to simplify things for the English-speaking user.

｀ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 ［ ］
    q わ え ら た や う い お ぱ ［ ］ 、
     あ さ だ ふ が は じ か l  ；  ' 
      ざ x  ち v  ば ん ん ，  。  ／

Examples: kkikukeko produces かきくけこ; tctsteto produces たちつてと

• Katakana (romaji-katakana conversion)

` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 ー＝
   q ワ エ ラ タ ヤ ウ イ オ パ ［ ］ 、
    ア サ ダ フ ガ ハ ジ カ l  ；  '
     ザ x チ v バ ン ン ， 。 ／

Example: kkikukeko produces カキクケコ; tctsteto produces タチツテト

• Nippon (romaji-kanji conversion)

Type a syllable in romaji. A menu appears, offering characters to be chosen by number. It is essential to know the readings expected by the software, such as naka1kawa1 to get the name read Nakagawa 中川. This IME does not recognizes the modifications to readings that occur when characters are combined.

Example: ni1hon1 produces 日本.

Korean

• 2bul
• 3bul (five variants)
• Hangul
• Hangul Romaja
• Hanja
• M17N (two variants)
• UIM (six variants)

and many others

Simplified Chinese

• Cangjie (two variants)
• Erbi
• Erbi-QS
• Pinyin (many variants)
• Quick (two variants)
• Wubi
• Ziranma

Traditional Chinese

• Wu
• Array30
• CNS11643
• Cangjie
• Cangjie 3
• Cangjie 5
• Canton HK
• Cantonese Pinyin
• Chewing
• Dayi3
• EasyBig
• Jyutping
• Quick
• Simplex
• Stroke 5
• ZhuYin
• ZhuYin Big

Installation and Activation

On Debian Linux, use apt-get, aptitude, or Synaptic to install the scim package along with im-switch (required for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) and scim-gtk2-immodule. You can also install skim, the KDE graphical frontend, which puts an icon on the toolbar. On systems using Red Hat packages, install the corresponding software using yum. Follow the configuration instructions to set the necessary environment variables. Then run

scim -d

from the command line.

In X, open a supported application such as OpenOffice Write or Firefox/Iceweasel. Click the keyboard icon in the system tray to get the main IME menu. This is separate from the KDE Keyboard Tool flag menu for selecting X keyboard layouts, and from other such tools used in other desktop environments.

SCIM on the XO

In some builds, XO software includes SCIM. Open a Write session, then right-click in the text area to get a menu that includes SCIM IMEs. More recently, you have to install SCIM manually.

Installing SCIM

1. Add a repository to the yum configuration that includes SCIM, such as http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/6/i386/
2. As root, type

yum install scim

You may want to add scim to an appropriate startup script.

Installing SCIM IMEs

Please help.

External Links

• Red Hat documentation for SCIM
• Chinese on XO in English
• Japanese on XO in Japanese