[tlug] Several east-asian languages on one box

[Thomas Piekenbrock <thomas.piekenbrock@example.com>]

 >How does it in Linux function to use two east-asian-languages on one 
 >box? In Mac OS X and Windows it's no problem but I do not want to use 
 >one of them so how do you do it? With one language it's not that 
 >problem (used several versions of the German variant of SuSE) but with 
 >two I cannot exactly imagine how to do it.
 >I read the mails before one said he is using two computers, one is 
 >saying logging out changing locales logging in when i correctly >remember.
 >What are the options and the ways to them?

Maybe there are smarter ways, but here is what I did:
My SuSE 9.0 is in German. Japanese is the second most used,
but occasionally I write emails in Big5 or GB Chinese.

step1: install canna, kinput2, xcin, libtabe, and a CJK capable console,
        e.g. rxvt.
step2: copy  /etc/skel/.xim.template   to   ~/.xim
step3: uncomment the following 2 lines at the end of ~/.xim
        export XMODIFIERS="@example.com=kinput2"
        kinput2 -xim -kinput -canna &

Then you can open any application which supports Japanese input,
e.g. typing from console:
       LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8 kedit
and you can type Japanese after toggling with [Shift][Space]

step4:
For Big5 Chinese I created a script as follows:
   #!/bin/bash
   export LC_CTYPE=zh_TW
   export XMODIFIERS="@example.com=xcin-zh_TW"
   xcin&
   rxvt
This opens a Chinese rxvt console, and all apps started from there has 
Chinese input of xcin. I get only one language per app window, but I can
open several app windows from the GUI (German), or a Japanese or Chinese 
console. Likewise I created kmenu items which start Mozilla mail right 
away in German, Japanese, or Chinese, depending which language I want to 
write.

Thomas Piekenbrock