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I am trying to learn Japanese, and I thought that as a part of this it would be good if my computer allowed me to type in Japanese, however after installing the Japanese language packs and setting my Input Sources section to also have Japanese, when I switch to Japanese typing, unlike with other languages except English of course, it just types in the English alphabet. I also installed Korean and Russian like this and when I use those Input Sources to type I get their alphabets so it's very strange that it's giving me the English one for Japanese...

Why is this and how can I fix it? I am running Ubuntu GNOME 15.10 with GNOME 3.18 and have installed Japanese through the language-selector-gnome, though have set the Input Sources section in the gnome-control-center to Japanese.

Information Update:

The output from dpkg-query -W ibus-anthy is:

ibus-anthy 1.5.6-1

From env | grep -E 'XMOD|IM_MODULE' is:

CLUTTER_IM_MODULE=xim
QT_IM_MODULE=ibus
XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus
QT4_IM_MODULE=xim
GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus

And from ps -A | grep ibus is:

 1714 tty7 00:00:00 ibus-daemon
 1720 tty7 00:00:00 ibus-dconf
 1722 tty7 00:00:00 ibus-x11
 1811 tty7 00:00:00 ibus-engine-sim
 1925 ? 00:00:28 ibus-daemon
 1958 ? 00:00:00 ibus-dconf
 1961 ? 00:00:00 ibus-ui-gtk3
 1967 ? 00:00:00 ibus-x11
 1975 ? 00:00:07 ibus-engine-sim
 2291 ? 00:00:00 ibus-engine-han
  • did you try via [ibus](http://www.localizingjapan.com/blog/2014/05/25/japanese-input-on-ubuntu-linux-14-04-lts-trusty-tahr/)? – Ron Feb 29 '16 at 14:53
  • @Ron: No, but currently it seems to be set to "none" rather than "IBus" or "fcitx", why is that? And what impact will it have if I try and change it apart from possibly making Japanese work? –  Feb 29 '16 at 15:45
  • "none" is default for non-CJKV users on Ubuntu GNOME. By changing it to either IBus or fcitx, an IM engine will be started at login and the necessary variables will be set. You should enable either ibus-anthy or fcitx-mozc. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Feb 29 '16 at 20:49
  • @Ron: I have now tested switching it to IBus, but that has not made any difference to whether or not it can write in Japanese. –  Mar 01 '16 at 14:33
  • Also, as it hasn't worked, should I change the option from "IBus" back to the default "none" or can I just leave it? –  Mar 01 '16 at 21:36
  • Did you really change to the correct input source? It should be e.g. **Japanese (Anthy)**, not just **Japanese**. (You can leave it with IBus, it won't hurt.) – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 01 '16 at 22:06
  • @GunnarHjalmarsson: There is no "Japanese (Anthy)" input source available, it only shows "Japanese"... What is the difference anyway? Why do they have the English alphabet for their usual one? –  Mar 01 '16 at 22:12
  • I assumed that you installed the ibus-anthy package when you installed "the Japanese language packs". If no, you should install it. Then, if IBus is enabled, you ought to see the "Japanese (Anthy)" option next time you log in. I don't know what the plain "Japanese" option is good for. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 01 '16 at 23:06
  • @GunnarHjalmarsson: Ok, well, it does seem to be installed, but I still don't get anything but the "Japanese" option for Japanese... No "Anthy"... –  Mar 02 '16 at 11:13
  • Then I'm out of ideas. Sorry. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 02 '16 at 15:23

1 Answers1

5

I found that multiple ibus-deamon instances were running and some other processes too, some of these would have been started by im-config, and then the other duplicate ones are likely to have been started directly or indirectly through the language-selector-gnome, so doing the following fixes the issue:

  1. Purge the language-selector-gnome (sudo apt-get purge language-selector-gnome).

  2. Reboot the machine.

  3. If you now go into the gnome-control-center's Region & Language section you should find that you can now add Japanese (Anthy) as an Input Source.

  4. So now when you set Japanese (Anthy) as your input source it you should be able to type in Japanese (though for some reason the Japanese input source only types in English).

However the standard utility for installing additional language packs does not install Japanese (Anthy) by default, in order to install it you should just be able to run:

sudo apt-get install ibus-anthy

If you have trouble though you should install the language-selector-gnome, choose to install Japanese through there, and then uninstall the language-selector-gnome as you won't be able to use Japanese (Anthy) otherwise.