[tlug] Japanese Input: Making It Work

[CL <az.4tlug@example.com>]

This is a continuation of the "Japanese Input on Kubuntu 12.04" thread 
but it talks about things that were in about four different 
sub-threads.  So, I'm starting the discussion over.

After maybe 6~8 weeks of Extreme Futzing (technical term) I have a 
working desktop that makes me happy and uses all of the familiar Debian 
commands that I'm familiar with.  And, although it doesn't work with all 
of the latest and greatest, it works.  And, all of us may have been 
blaming the wrong program for the iBus input problems -- I've found that 
upgrading to LibreOffice v.4.x causes most of the problems and it 
doesn't appear to be KDE related ... maybe ... probably ... with some 
degree of certainty.

What I ended up with:

Debian 7.02 Wheezy amd64 + KDE.  iBus + mosc works in all programs (see 
fudges below).

As installed -- the third time (the first two produced unstable results 
that don't exist in this installation and I was unable to explain or 
reproduce) -- things mostly _Just Worked as Intended_.  I had E<->J 
switching at the keyboard in all of my chosen applications.

Using the debian backports for Firefox, I was able to upgrade IceWeasel 
to a level equivalent to the latest version of Firefox (25.0), which 
made all of my Do Not Track and privacy Add-Ons work properly and made 
me less of a joke to the websites I need to use for business.

I wanted the latest version of Claws Mail (3.9.2) because the standard 
installed version (3.8.1) has problems with the Oxygen theme and the 
upgrade fixes a lot of niggles including a disturbing new tendency to 
seize up the screen and reboot the machine without warning when I was 
using LibreOffice or if I changed screens in IceWeasel when Claws-Mail 
was receiving new mail.  Trying to download and install .debs of the new 
program version kept producing error messages about missing lib-files 
(mostly) that "-f" didn't fix.  I found that if I switched my 
Distribution Preferences to "wheezy-backports" I could install it with 
Synaptic, which repaired the broken packages for me.

But, wait!  There was more!  When I switched to "wheezy-backports" the 
Kernel was upgraded to 3.10 from 3.02 (upgrading itself to 3.11 the 
following morning) and LibreOffice was "upgraded from v.3.5 to v.4.1.  
And, it was no longer possible to switch between languages when writing 
documents using the keyboard.  At first, I could switch languages on the 
keyboard, but there was no confirmation from the systray icon.  After a 
couple of successful switches, I could only switch into Japanese but had 
to grab the mouse and switch to English with the mouse and, after a few 
switches that way, the only way to change languages was to restart 
iBus.  *sigh*

So, I changed my Distribution Preferences from "wheezy-backports" to 
"stable" and uninstalled LibreOffice.  After I rebooted, Synaptic said 
the official version of LibreOffice had fallen back to 3.5and, after 
running "install -f" was able to install that version from the command 
line.  And iBus works again.  I filed a report with Bugzilla, since the 
reported problem and fix they recommended didn't work.

Other issues that needed to be solved were setting up multiarch so I 
could run Skype (which is 32-bit) on amd64 and, due to the kernel 
upgrades, HPLIP had to be manually installed from a tarball but now my 
two HP printers and fax all work properly.  The downside of the manual 
installation is that I ma no longer able to configure our printers for 
both Bluetooth and Ethernet or WiFi and Bluetooth any longer and I had 
to decide how to configure each only to accept print jobs one way each.

So, all-in-all, I am pleased with my new setup and I learned a lot more 
about setting up and maintaining my OS in the process.

--
CL