[tlug] Japanese and FreeBSD-10

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

I don't know how many people here use FreeBSD, but since a job change last
year, I'm in a FreeBSD-centric company.

In FreeBSD-9.x, Japanese input was fairly standard for me.  Install
ibus-mozc, add variables for LC_CTYPE, GTK_IM_MODULE, QT_IM_MODULE and
XMODIFIERS, and all worked as expected.

However, in FreeBSD-10 it wasn't working. (Nor was fcitx).  Without going
too deeply into my trials and tribulations, it seems that at least in my
two preferred desktops, openbox and dwm, ibus is ignoring the hot keys.  I
tried various combinations, thinking that perhaps both window managers had
some keyboard shortcut overriding the hot keys.  



Finally, byuu on FreeBSD forums gave me a solution. He has a small shell
script that does what the hot keys should be doing, and creating a keyboard
shortcut to said script works.   (Actually, a shortcut to dmenu also
works--once in dmenu, even if your desktop is stuck in Japanese input you
can open dmenu, which will input in English, type the script name, and all
your other apps switch back to English input.  

The script is simply 

#!/bin/sh
if [ `ibus engine` = 'mozc-jp' ]; then
  ibus engine xkb:us::eng
else
ibus engine mozc-jp  #or whatever IME you prefer; change it above too.
fi


So, thought I'd pass this along for FreeBSD users. 



-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6