Bug 79815

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.2.1)
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages
OS:          Linux

While the kxkb feature is really great, I hope it would be possible to take this further by adding support for the CJK languages that require an input manager - specifically in my case, Chinese (as is the case in WinXP today). Getting a Chinese XIM to work with your system is a lot of work with almost all distributions that are not completely Chinese-centric (and even with them, sometimes), and this will scare away a lot of prospective Chinese-speaking users. In addition, even though it is possible to get Chinese XIMs to work by tweaking yourself, I consider the implementation substandard because it relies on LC_CTYPE etc enviromental variables. The problem is that these require that I either only use Chinese for one session, or start all my programmes from a shell where I have already specified the language, etc. However, I want Chinese to be available for all my programmes, but not all the time (I write emails in Norwegian, English, Chinese and Russian)... And what if I require to XIMs (there are a lot of Chinese learning Japanese, etc. What would they do?).

I realize that there are several XIMs competing today, however a good start would be to choose one and see if it was possible to integrate it - a future option could be to provide a choice for the user (as WinXP which currently provides one IM itself, but the user can also install others that put themselves neatly on the button).

I realize this might require a rather large rewrite of the module, since originally it was only meant (perhaps) as a frontend for xkb, but if Linux is going to see much progress in the CJK countries (or other countries that require XIMs), I believe it's crucial. This is something I feel strongly about, and I would do it myself, if I had the skills. I would anyhow love to help test such a feature, if neccessary.