scim — smart common input method
scim -l
scim [-c config] [-e|-ne engine]
[-f frontend] [--no-socket] [-d]
scim -h
Smart common input method (SCIM) is a platform for input methods.
Input methods are useful for users who need to input characters that can't
be represented by the keys or key combinations on the keyboard, and it's
essential for languages that use ideograms, such as Chinese, Japanese and
Korean (CJK), as their alphabets contain hundreds or thousands of
characters.
This is the main program of SCIM platform. It can be used to
invoke the input method as well as list available input method modules.
Most options have both a short version and a long version, and
they take the same arguments.
- -c | --config
module
- Use specified Config module.
- -d | --daemon
- Run as a daemon. The program will exit and leave a daemon in the
background if invoked with this option.
- -e | --engines
module[,module]...
- Use specified IMEngine modules. Only the named module(s) will be loaded,
separate module names with comma.
- -ne | --no-engines
module[,module]...
- Use all IMEngine modules except specified ones. All modules except the
named one(s) will be loaded, separate module names with comma.
- -f | --frontend
module
- Use specified FrontEnd module.
- -h | --help
- Show summary of options.
- -l | --list
- Print the version number and list all the available modules, categorized
in three groups — FrontEnd, Config and IMEngine.
- --no-socket
- Do not start a socket FrondEnd module.
- XMODIFIERS
- Should be set to "@im=SCIM". Note that XMODIFIERS is case
sensitive, and scim need uppercase. If you set it to lowercase,
there will be no error message but scim won't work.
- GTK_IM_MODULE
- GTK+ applications can use many different modules to connect with input
methods, and SCIM can work in two different modes to provide input methods
to GTK+ with two different modules. One is XIM mode, using the
"xim" GTK IM module from GTK+ itself. The other is GTK IM mode,
using the "scim" GTK IM module provided by SCIM platform. The
environment variable GTK_IM_MODULE is used by GTK+ to specify which
GTK IM module the application should use, to use SCIM's two modes, set
GTK_IM_MODULE to "xim" or "scim"
accordingly.
To use scim in XIM mode, execute the following commands in
an X terminal (assuming Bourne style shell):
XMODIFIERS="@im=SCIM"
export XMODIFIERS
GTK_IM_MODULE="xim"
export GTK_IM_MODULE
scim -d
<program>
Now you can press Ctrl-space to activate scim in the program you just
started from X terminal. To avoid the inconvenience of having to start the
program from X terminal, make sure you set XMODIFIERS and
GTK_IM_MODULE before starting your X session.
To use scim in GTK IM mode, just start any GTK+
application, then right click in the application, choose "Input Methods
-> SCIM Input Method" in the pop-up menu, and scim should
automatically start. Alternatively, you can use the following commands to
set scim as the default GTK IM module (again assuming Bourne style
shell):
GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export GTK_IM_MODULE
<gtk-program>
Here scim will also automatically start when you start your GTK+ program.
However, it's still a good idea to start scim explicitly even if you
use GTK IM mode, because if only one application is using GTK IM mode,
scim will automatically stop when you quit this application. Then when
you start a new application, scim will start again, this can cause
quite long delay for application start and quit, giving people the impression
of "everything slows down when using scim".
The following command starts scim in daemon mode, using the
simple configure module, Pinyin IM engine module, X11 frontend module:
scim -c simple -e pinyin -f x11 --no-socket
-d
- /etc/scim/global, /etc/scim/config
- Configuration file for system wide settings
- ~/.scim/global, ~/.scim/config
- User specific settings
There is a brief English README giving some introduction and tips
about SCIM, in Debian system it's installed in
/usr/share/doc/scim/ and gzipped.
Debian users should also read the NEWS.Debian and
README.Debian files in /usr/share/doc/scim/. There are also
other README files in the same directory about using SCIM on a Debian
system.
SCIM platform is written by James Su and many other
contributors.
This manual page is written by Osamu Aoki and Ming Hua for the
Debian system, but hopefully it's also useful for other users. This
document is distributed under the same license as the scim software
package.