Morning Raga

Captured by -  Vinayak Hegde

Now write in your mother tongue with IBus

I always loved to write in my mother tongue whenever I have a chance. I was using a small extension available in Chromium browser in my Kubuntu system. But it was restricted me to use my mother tongue Kannada only in web applications like social networking sites and blogs etc…

I tried to install and use SCIM (say SKIM as I use Kubuntu). But it crashes upon start. So I wanted to ditch it.
These steps works for Kubuntu. If you want to install IBus in other Linux distros, you need to modify commands and steps based on your package manager and Desktop environment.

• Install IBus

$ sudo aptitude install ibus ibus-qt4 ibus-gtk ibus-m17n

• Now switch input method (CAREFUL: don’t use sudo here)

$ sudo im-switch -s ibus

$ im-switch -s ibus

This will create a symlink in $HOME/.xinput.d/ directory. If you already have symlink  in  $HOME/.xinput.d/  pointing to a file other than ibus in /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/ directory then remove that symlink. Else the
above command will say File Exists and won’t create a new symlink.

• Start IBus setup

Press Alt+F2 and launch ibus-setup

Now IBus Preferences window pops-out. In Input Method tab select an input method of your choice and click Addbutton.

The first method in the list will be your default input method.Adjust other options to suit to your own choice and close the window.

• Now configure system  to start  IBus on system startup

Go to  KMenu -> Applications -> Settings -> System Settings -> System Administration-> Starup and Shutdown -> Add Program

Then put /usr/bin/ibus-daemon in Text Box and click OK. Now you will get a Properties Dialog Box. In that, click on Application  tab and put 

Name – ibus-daemon
Description – Intelligent Input Bus
Command – /usr/bin/ibus-daemon –desktop=kde –panel=/usr/lib/ibus/ibus-ui-kde
Click OK.
Now Logout of KDE and Login again.

Open text editor and press Control + Space and you should be able to write  in the language you chose as default input method.

EDIT: Additionally, you can export following variables in your ~/.bashrc
export GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
export QT_IM_MODULE=ibus
export XMODIFIERS=”@im=ibus”