kenn humborg kennlinuxie wed jul 31 2002 065750pm 0100 brian foster wrote xims generally work complex compose frontend ie build character series composes root fundamental strokes radicals think called commit composite character application yes keyboarding scripts _is_ quite slow believe good typist characters minute assume using qwerty keyboard painful speak chinese input methods hell lot better chars per minute example simplest chinese im pinyin phonetically spell character using pinyin romanisation rules example zhong guo chinese china entered typing zhong youre prompted list possible matches common first numbered list hit say 2 second list similarly guo 3 see regarding keystroke counts much different english however get familiar sorting order possible match lists little slow input methods keystrokeefficient losing phonetic simplicity pinyin chinese characters almost always pronounced firstpartsecondpart zhong zhong one input method assigns single letters possible first second parts might represent zh first part ong second part youd enter zhong ii digit choose possible matches think microsoft global ime stroke mode build character stroke stroke youd use know character want dont know pronounce xims compose place others special line seem special window root also somemost xims apparently support usascii input mode well _not_ general latinalphabet input mode seems require another tla called kbd apparently doesnt work xim also used implying switch back forth usascii input mode us englishspeakers would call normal keyboardingtyping input eg chinese im sure impression switch often toggle something like probably often ctrlspace thats microsoft global input method editor uses xcin uses iirc regarding original posters question heres works red hat 72 make sure xcin ttfontszh_cn rpms installed fonts might essential think xfree comes usuable chinese fonts xfree86fonts rpms select chinese simplified language gdm logging everything work youve got default clock gnome panel see chinese lot menus also chinese able find way around use ctrlspace toggle chinese english input chinese mode shiftspace toggles something dont understand blocks exiting english cant use ctrlspace get back english try hitting shiftspace ctrlspace fire gnome terminal chinese mode type zhong 1 guo 1 youll see chinese china getting work selecting english gdm screen left exercise reader looking etcx11xinitxinitrcdxinput usrsharedocxcin give enough info later kenn irish linux users group iluglinuxie httpwwwlinuxiemailmanlistinfoilug unsubscription information list maintainer listmasterlinuxie thu 1 aug 2002 024141 0100 ilug inputting chinese characters redhat 73