ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch

[Zach Williams]

Hi

My OS is Debian Stretch (64bit) with Gnome DE.

I wish to use ibus-pinyin to type Chinese characters and the packages named below were installed:

ibus-pinyin
libpyzy-1.0-0v5
pinyin-database

An icon called Input Method appeared on the list of installed software. I clicked on it and a window titled Input Method Configuration (im-config, ver. 0.30-1) popped up with the contents as follows:

Current configuration for the input method:
* Active configuration: ibus (normally missing)
* Normal automatic choice: ibus (normally ibus or fcitx or uim)
* Override rule: zh_CN,ibus:zh_TW,ibus:zh_HK,ibus:zh_SG,ibus
* Current override choice: (en_US)
* Current automatic choice: ibus
* Number of valid choices: 2 (normally 1)
The override rule is defined in /etc/default/im-config.
The configuration set by im-config is activated by re-starting X.
Explicit selection is not required to enable the automatic configuration if the active one is default/auto/cjkv/missing.
Available input methods: ibus xim
Unless you really need them all, please make sure to install only one input method tool.

There were two buttons: Cancel and OK. I clicked OK.

Another window popped up with the below contents:

Do you explicitly select the user configuration?

* Select NO, if you do not wish to update it. (recommended)
* Select YES, if you wish to update it.

There were two buttons: No and Yes. I clicked Yes.

A third window popped up:

"Select user configuration. The user configuration supersedes the system one."

There were 7 radio buttons to choose from. I clicked the radio button called ibus. Next, I clicked OK.

A fourth window popped up:

Setting the user configuration /home/belleville/.xinputrc to ibus.
Manual configuration selects: ibus
Intelligent Input Bus (IBus)
* Required for all: ibus
* Language specific input conversion support:
* Japanese: ibus-mozc (best) or ibus-anthy or ibus-skk
* Korean: ibus-hangul
* Simplified Chinese: ibus-pinyin or ibus-sunpinyin or ibus-googlepinyin
* Traditional Chinese: ibus-chewing
* Thai: ibus-table-thai
* Vietnamese: ibus-unikey or ibus-table-viqr
* X Keyboard emulation: ibus-xkbc
* Generic keyboard translation table: ibus-m17n or ibus-table* packages
* Application platform support:
* GNOME/GTK+: ibus-gtk and ibus-gtk3 (both)
* KDE/Qt: ibus-qt4
* Clutter: ibus-clutter
* EMACS: ibus-el

The user configuration is modified by im-config.

Restart the X session to activate the new user configuration.
If a daemon program for the previous configuration is re-started by the X session manager, you may need to kill it manually with kill(1).
See im-config(8) and /usr/share/doc/im-config/README.Debian.gz for more.

For the last time, I clicked the OK button. No more windows popped up.

I rebooted my machine.

After I re-logged in to Debian Stretch, there is no keyboard icon on the top right corner of the screen (in Debian Wheezy there is one.) I tried Ctrl+Space or Windows+Space to no avail.

Thanks for your help.

Zach

[Yubin Ruan]

Well, I believe a post in Chinese would help you more. And, if you use
Telegram, there is a Debian-Chinese group where lots of people discuss
topics related to Debian every day (in Chinese :)

/Yubin

[Boyuan Yang]

First of all, you are encouraged to write Chinese in this maillist.
Nevertheless English is acceptable.

To set up a proper environment on Debian for an Input Method Framework like
ibus, "im-config" is needed of course but that is not everything. Some extra
configurations might be necessary too based on the DE you are using.

You are recommended to uninstall other input methods like fcitx and remove any
customized instructions about environment variable exporting inside ~/.bashrc,
~/.profile, ~/.xprofile etc in advance if there's any, to prevent any unexpected
interference coming from third party configurations.

You are recommended to set your locale to zh_CN.UTF-8 for a complete
(Simplified) Chinese environment.

You need to install a complete set of ibus. As previously said in the mail
according to the output of im-config, extra packages like ibus-qt4, ibus-gtk,
ibus-gtk3 and many more packages should be installed in advance. I also
noticed that you did not install the "ibus" package, which should be fixed. You
also need to install at least one concrete input method for Chinese, like
ibus-pinyin(DEPRECATED AND NOT RECOMMENDED), ibus-libpinyin or ibus-rime.

Now that you are using GNOME Shell, please reboot the system after previous
installation and check GNOME Control Center for the settings for locale and
languages. You must select the IM source from the list. For example, select "汉
语 (Intellegent Pinyin)" if you installed ibus-libpinyin. Then rerun im-config
and select ibus. Read all instructions *again* and install any missing
packages.

Reboot again and you should notice an icon on the top-right corner for IM. Use
super+space to switch between different IMs.

I tested this procedure on my laptop running Debian Testing. You are
encouraged to test by yourself and read articles about contemporary setup of
ibus on new GNOME Shell, say GNOME 3.24 or later, which is pretty different
from earlier version of GNOME Shell.

There are other noteworthy articles about IBus around the Internet, like this
one on Arch Wiki ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IBus ). Arch Linux is
slightly different from Debian but most of the contents should be applicable.

Regards,
Boyuan Yang

[Zach Williams]

>On Sun, 7/9/17, ㎡ Q <lea...@outlook.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>
>Date: Sunday, July 9, 2017, 11:47 PM
>
>
>Have you ever try All+F2, then run the
>ibus-daemon?
>

I pressed Alt+F2, a window popped up with the message:

Enter a Command

What command must I enter

[Zach Williams]

>On Mon, 7/10/17, Yubin Ruan <ablack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>

>Cc: "Debian邮件列表" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>
>Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 12:14 AM

>
>Well, I believe a post in Chinese would help you more. And, if you use Telegram, there is a Debian-Chinese group where lots of people >discuss topics related to Debian every day (in Chinese

Hi Yubin

There are two reasons I am unable to post in Chinese:

1. I am not a native Chinese speaker. My command of Chinese is at intermediate level (whatever that means....)
2. My current OS is having problems with launching ibus-pinyin. That is the reason for the post on this forum.

As for using Telegram, see reason #1.

[Anthony]

允許我以繁體回覆。

根據 Steve McIntyre <st...@einval.com> 於 Wed, 21 Jun 2017 10:22:49 +0100
有關於Debian 9.0.1 開機映像檔的信件表示，解決了4個Bug，還有兩個Bug沒解決：
https://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2017/06/msg00039.html

1. 部份硬體不接受KDE開機桌面版
3. UTF-8終端機無法正確組態於開機映像檔

我：桌面版，昇級至9.0.1，立即放棄，重新安裝8.8。


---
Have a nice day.
Sincerely,
Anthony Mao 毛慶禎

Zach Williams 於 2017-07-10 17:01 寫到:

[Zach Williams]

> On Mon, 7/10/17, Boyuan Yang <073...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>

>Cc: debian-c...@lists.debian.org
>Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 2:48 AM

>
>
>First of all, you are encouraged to write Chinese in this maillist. Nevertheless English is acceptable.
>

Thank you for your suggestion. I am unable to post in Chinese because:

1. I am not a native Chinese speaker. My command of Chinese is only at intermediate level (whatever it means.....)
2. My Debian Stretch is having problems with ibus-pinyin. There is no way I can post in Chinese.

>Some extra configurations might be necessary too based on the DE you are using.

What are those extra configurations? Can you elaborate? I am using the minimal Gnome DE.

>You are recommended to uninstall other input methods like fcitx

The only Chinese input method that I installed is ibus-pinyin.

>and remove any customized instructions about environment variable exporting inside ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, ~/.xprofile etc in advance
>if there's any, to prevent any unexpected interference coming from third party configurations.

I don't understand what you meant by "customized instructions about environment variable exporting inside....". My knowledge of Debian and Linux is only elementary.

Can you elaborate or do you want me to post the contents of my ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, ~/.xprofile?

>You are recommended to set your locale to zh_CN.UTF-8 for a complete (Simplified) Chinese environment.

I can't because my wife doesn't read and write Chinese.

>You need to install a complete set of ibus. As previously said in the mail according to the output of im-config, extra packages like
>ibus-qt4, ibus-gtk, ibus-gtk3 and many more packages should be installed in advance. I also noticed that you did not install the
>"ibus" package, which should be fixed.

What are the "many more packages" that I should install in advance?

I checked the package description of ibus-qt4 and it says: "ibus-qt4 is the QT4 client of ibus, it provide a qt-immodule for ibus." I don't use QT4 client of ibus and therefore I didn't install it.

According to Synaptic, I did install the "ibus" package. The checkbox next to it is colored green.

>You also need to install at least one concrete input method for Chinese, like ibus-pinyin(DEPRECATED AND NOT RECOMMENDED),
> ibus-libpinyin or ibus-rime.

You wrote that ibus-pinyin has been deprecated and thus not recommended for use. Please recommend me a Chinese input method that is in active development. Thank you.

>Now that you are using GNOME Shell, please reboot the system after previous installation and check GNOME Control Center for the
>settings for locale and languages.

Where is the Gnome Control Center? I'm sorry for asking that question because my knowledge of Debian and Linux is elementary.

>You must select the IM source from the list. For example, select "汉 语 (Intellegent Pinyin)"

What list is that? On my laptop machine, there is an icon called "Input Method". Is it the "IM source" you were referring to?

>if you installed ibus-libpinyin. Then rerun im-config and select ibus. Read all instructions *again* and install any missing packages.

I did it multiple times and each time, ibus-pinyin failed to launch.

>Reboot again and you should notice an icon on the top-right corner for IM. Use super+space to switch between different IMs.

I rebooted my machines multiple times and no icon for IM appeared on the top-right corner. What did I do wrong?

>There are other noteworthy articles about IBus around the Internet, like this one on Arch Wiki ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php

>/IBus). Arch Linux is slightly different from Debian but most of the contents should be applicable.

Thanks for your tip. I shall have a look at it.

Regards.

Zach

[Zach Williams]

>On Mon, 7/10/17, ㎡ Q <lea...@outlook.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>

>Cc: "debian-c...@lists.debian.org" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>
>Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 5:49 PM
>
>
>Just ibus-daemon is enough

I did per your instruction after pressing Alt+F2 and a window popped up with the words "Enter a Command".

Nothing happened :(

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion. Please keep them coming.

[Yubin Ruan]

I did not mean any offense. Just suggestions. Hopefully you don't
mind. As for the solution, Boyuan has posted it with many details.

As for me, I always used sougou-pinyin or google-pinyin on Debian and
Ubuntu. I would suggest you use one of those as they are the most
popular among Chinese users, from whom you can get lots of help from.

To install sougou-pinyin, do the following:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:fcitx-team/nightly
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fcitx
sudo apt-get install sogoupinyin

and then use `im-config' or `fcitx-config' to configure the fcitx
input framework. If you can't apt-get the sougou-pin package, you can
download from the official website [1], install it manually and fix
any dependency problems you encounter. There are three things you have
to remember:

1. switch from ibus to fcitx in your system setting after you have
installed fcitx.
2. configure fcitx to use sougou-pin with command `fcitx-config'
or `im-config'
3. reboot

The process for google-pinyin is similar. There is a blog post in
Chinese [2] (for ubuntu ) which can provide you some hints. Hopefully
that would help.

I am not a Debian 9 user currently (using ubuntu now) so I don't know
every detail. Nevertheless I would be glad if I can provide any
further help.


[1]: http://pinyin.sogou.com/linux/
[2]: https://www.linuxdashen.com/ubuntu%E5%AE%89%E8%A3%85%E8%B0%B7%E6%AD%8C%E6%8B%BC%E9%9F%B3%E8%BE%93%E5%85%A5%E6%B3%95%EF%BC%88fcitx%E8%BE%93%E5%85%A5%E6%B3%95%E6%A1%86%E6%9E%B6%EF%BC%89


Regards,
Yubin

[Yubin Ruan]

2017-07-10 17:19 GMT+08:00 Zach Williams <zesw...@yahoo.com>:

No harm to join a live telegram discussion if you can't speak Chinese.
Many Chinese users can speak English fluently with you.

/Yubin

[㎡ Q]

Have you ever try All+F2, then run the ibus-daemon? 

Maybe it works, and you can choose the pinyin method in setting page

[Zach Williams]

On Mon, 7/10/17, ㎡ Q <lea...@outlook.com> wrote:

Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>

Cc: "debian-c...@lists.debian.org" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>
Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 12:25 AM

Have you ever try All+F2, then run the
ibus-daemon? 

Maybe it works, and you can choose the pinyin method in
setting page

After I pressed Alt+F2, a window popped up saying "Enter a Command"

I entered ibus-daemon in the empty box and press the Enter key on my keyboard

Nothing happened :(

[Zach Williams]

>On Mon, 7/10/17, Yubin Ruan <ablack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>

>Cc: "Debian邮件列表" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>
>Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 7:59 PM

>
>
>I did not mean any offense. Just suggestions. Hopefully you don't mind. As for the solution, Boyuan has posted it with many details.

Don't worry. No offense taken. Life's too short to be petty.

>To install sougou-pinyin, do the following:
>sudo apt-add-repository ppa:fcitx-team/nightly

For your info, I am using Debian, not Ubuntu. Hence repos such as ppa are not applicable to my OS.

>If you can't apt-get the sougou-pin package, you can download from the official website [1], install it manually and fix any
>dependency problems you encounter.

Thanks but no thanks. I prefer to install pre-compiled packages from Debian's repos. The reason is I have an elementary knowledge of Debian and Linux and I do not know how to fix dependency issues.

>There are three things you have to remember:
>
>1. switch from ibus to fcitx in your system setting after you have installed fcitx.
>
>2. configure fcitx to use sougou-pin with command `fcitx-config' or `im-config'
>
>3. reboot

Thanks for your tip.

Boyuan in his first reply to me told me that ibus-pinyin had been deprecated. Am I right to assume that you're from mainland China? I have noticed that mainland Chinese users prefer to use fcitx over scim or ibus. Please correct me if I am wrong.

>I am not a Debian 9 user currently (using ubuntu now) so I don't know every detail. Nevertheless I would be glad if I can provide any
>further help.

If you are from mainland China, can you give me a rough estimate of the number of Debian users? Which Linux distro has the largest user base in mainland China? Is it Ubuntu? Or Ubuntu Kylin?

Well, you can help me if you have a spare computer to install Debian Stretch (English) and try to make ibus-pinyin work. I am just kidding.....But if you have the time to spare, why not experiment with it?

>[1]: http://pinyin.sogou.com/linux/
>[2]: https://www.linuxdashen.com/ubuntu%E5%AE%89%E8%A3%85%E8%B0%B7%E6%AD%8C%E6%8B%BC%E9%9F%B3%E8%B

>%93%E5%85%A5%E6%B3%95%EF%BC%88fcitx%E8%BE%93%E5%85%A5%E6%B3%95%E6%A1%86%E6%9E%B6%EF%BC%89

Regards.

Zach

[Zach Williams]

>On Mon, 7/10/17, Yubin Ruan <ablack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>
>Cc: "Debian邮件列表" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>

>Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 8:11 PM

>
>
>No harm to join a live telegram discussion if you can't speak Chinese. Many Chinese users can speak English fluently with you.

Is Telegram only available on the Android platform? Does it have a PC version?

Just to make sure we are talking about the same app, below is the URL to the official link:

https://telegram.org/

[Yubin Ruan]

2017-07-10 21:04 GMT+08:00 Zach Williams <zesw...@yahoo.com>:
>>On Mon, 7/10/17, Yubin Ruan <ablack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>
>>Cc: "Debian邮件列表" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>
>>Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 7:59 PM
>>
>>
>>I did not mean any offense. Just suggestions. Hopefully you don't mind. As for the solution, Boyuan has posted it with many details.
>
> Don't worry. No offense taken. Life's too short to be petty.
>
>>To install sougou-pinyin, do the following:
>>sudo apt-add-repository ppa:fcitx-team/nightly
>
> For your info, I am using Debian, not Ubuntu. Hence repos such as ppa are not applicable to my OS.

Ah... sorry for that. Just use fcitx and install fcitx directly. I
believe it is in the official repo.

>
>>If you can't apt-get the sougou-pin package, you can download from the official website [1], install it manually and fix any
>>dependency problems you encounter.
>
> Thanks but no thanks. I prefer to install pre-compiled packages from Debian's repos. The reason is I have an elementary knowledge of Debian and Linux and I do not know how to fix dependency issues.

That is pre-compiled package. Just do `dpkg -i
/path/to/the/deb/you/download.deb'. If you encounter any dependency
problem, there would be instructions to follow in the error output.
Maybe something like "dpkg -f ..." (I forgot that).

>>There are three things you have to remember:
>>
>>1. switch from ibus to fcitx in your system setting after you have installed fcitx.
>>
>>2. configure fcitx to use sougou-pin with command `fcitx-config' or `im-config'
>>
>>3. reboot
>
> Thanks for your tip.
>
> Boyuan in his first reply to me told me that ibus-pinyin had been deprecated. Am I right to assume that you're from mainland China? I have noticed that mainland Chinese users prefer to use fcitx over scim or ibus. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Yes, fcitx rules.

>>I am not a Debian 9 user currently (using ubuntu now) so I don't know every detail. Nevertheless I would be glad if I can provide any
>>further help.
>
> If you are from mainland China, can you give me a rough estimate of the number of Debian users? Which Linux distro has the largest user base in mainland China? Is it Ubuntu? Or Ubuntu Kylin?

I don't know the exact number, but from my experience, most mainland
Chinese users prefer ubuntu, debian and arch-linux. Ubuntu Kylin is
friendly to Linuxer beginner (for example, you don't have to worry
about input method because those are all pre-installed). Notice that
there are also many companies using Centos and redhat, if you call
that a "user base".

> Well, you can help me if you have a spare computer to install Debian Stretch (English) and try to make ibus-pinyin work. I am just kidding.....But if you have the time to spare, why not experiment with it?

Well, I am under heavy workload and do not have so much time now
(maybe tomorrow). Please join the telegram group first to see whether
you can get help there (and learn some Chinese ;-)

Still, I would suggest fcitx.

[㎡ Q]

Just ibus-daemon is enough

On Jul 10, 2017 4:05 PM, Zach Williams <zesw...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Sun, 7/9/17, ㎡ Q <lea...@outlook.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>

>Date: Sunday, July 9, 2017, 11:47 PM
>
>

>Have you ever try All+F2, then run the
>ibus-daemon?
>

[㎡ Q]

If you run the ibus-daemon and there is no ibus icon appear  in the top panel, then perhaps it means you do not have the ibus installed correctly.
Try to run the ibus-daemon in the terminal, such as gnome-terminal,  it will tells you why ibus can not be run.

On Jul 10, 2017 7:54 PM, Zach Williams <zesw...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Mon, 7/10/17, ㎡ Q <lea...@outlook.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
 To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>

 Cc: "debian-c...@lists.debian.org" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>
 Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 12:25 AM

 
 
 Have you ever try All+F2, then run the
 ibus-daemon? 
 

[Zach Williams]

>On Mon, 7/10/17, ㎡ Q <lea...@outlook.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>
>Cc: "debian-c...@lists.debian.org" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>

>Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 9:31 PM

>
>
>If you run the ibus-daemon and there is no ibus icon appear  in the top panel, then perhaps it means you do not have the ibus installed correctly.
>
>Try to run the ibus-daemon in the terminal, such as gnome-terminal,  it will tells you why ibus can not be run.
>

Thanks for your tip.

A user on another forum managed to show me how to enable ibus-pinyin using the Gnome Control Center. Now I am able to type Chinese characters.

[Zach Williams]

>On Mon, 7/10/17, Yubin Ruan <ablack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Subject: Re: ibus-pinyin: Unable to get it to work on Debian Stretch
>To: "Zach Williams" <zesw...@yahoo.com>

>Cc: "Debian邮件列表" <debian-c...@lists.debian.org>, "Boyuan Yang" <073...@gmail.com>
>Date: Monday, July 10, 2017, 10:01 PM

>
>Well, I am under heavy workload and do not have so much time now (maybe tomorrow). Please join the telegram group first to see whether you can get help there
>(and learn some Chinese ;-)

Please don't do that because a user from another forum managed to help me get ibus-pinyin to work. Apparently one has to go to Gnome Control Center --> Settings --> Region and language to enable ibus-pinyin. I am now able to type Chinese characters.

>Still, I would suggest fcitx.

Thanks for your suggestion and your time.

Regards.

Zach