GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 337020
Cannot input Japanese characters through IIIMF / SCIM
Last modified: 2018-06-29 21:00:59 UTC
Please describe the problem: When I invoke IIIMF to input Japanese characters into the description field of a transaction, GnuCash ignores any keyboard input except the one to turn off IIIMF and [Enter]. [Shift]+[Space] is the key stroke to turn on and off the IIIMF input mode in my environment. This problem only happens in the edit tab of an account. I can enter Japanese characters in other fields such as the account name field in the account edit window of an account. I don't know if this is a Japanese specific problem or not. Steps to reproduce: 1. Open an account 2. Click on the description field of a transaction 3. Press [Shift]+[Space] to invoke IIIMF Actual results: Whatever key I press (except [Shift]+[Space] and [Enter]), nothing happens. Expected results: Japanese Characters appear in the field. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: I use ATOK for linux as the language engine for IIIMF on Fedora Core 4 on i386 Laptop.
Err... sorry, but all of the developers are unfortunately located in one of the western countries and neither use nor know "IIIMF" as an input method. Could you add a description of how we could test/reproduce this, written for a western computer user? I. e. which package would I have to install, how should I configure that, and so on. Thanks.
Sorry for not replying soon. I was upgrading my system from FC4 to FC5. With FC5, I'm using the input method SCIM+Anthy instead of iiimf+ATOK, but the same problem occurs. Now I will explain how to reproduce the problem. In the case of FC5, please install the packages "scim" and "scim-anthy". You may need to set your locale to "ja_JP.UTF-8". Then start gnucash (I'm using 1.9.5 now). Open an account and set the focus to the description field of a transaction. Press Ctrl+Space. Nothing will happen except a space is inserted to the field. This is not good. Now you can see what I'm expecting by taking the following steps. Close the account register tab. Then select an account and click "Edit" button to open the "edit account" window. Set the focus on the "Account name" field. When you press Ctrl+Space, you will find a small tool bar appears at the lower right corner of the display. This is called the scim tool bar and this is what I want. The appearance of the tool bar indicates that you are now ready to input multi-byte characters. I expect that the same thing happens when I press Ctrl+Space in the transaction fields. It looks like the transaction fields are not properly configured to accept multilingual input methods like scim. However since I'm not a gnome or gtk programmer, I don't have enough skill to pursue the problem further. For more detailed information about scim, please refer to http://www.scim-im.org/ .
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I hope some of us will be able to work on that soon, but I'm not sure whether we can fix that before 2.0.0 or rather after that. In any case thank you for the explanation and we will look into this sooner or later.
Adding SCIM to title. Closing. 1.9.6 should improve the input through SCIM. Make sure you have unset "Embed Preedit String into client window" in GnuCash by scim-setup or the panel applet thingie. One note about the register: It does not provide a typical GtkEntry environment, so there is a) no possibility to change the gtk input method (change it in some dialog, or have it set via GTK_IM_MODULE/LANG/whatever), and b) the SCIM "window" is shown in the top left corner, but i guess this cannot be fixed as long as we use the current register implementation. As all GnuCash developers seem to have only ASCII and similar keyboards/locales, I beg you to try out 1.9.6 and tell us about your experiences. If it fits here, just reopen the bug, otherwise file a new one. Thank you for your patience so far :) PS: 1.9.6 will be released soon.
I tried 1.9.6 and the problem is basically solved., i.e. I can now input Japanese characters in the register window using SCIM + Anthy. As Andreas pointed out, I had to turn off "Embed Preedit String into client window" option. It is a little bit inconvenient, but anyway now I can use GnuCash fully in Japanese. This is a great improvement for Japanese users. Thank you very much for your help !
GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. This bug has been copied to https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=337020. Please update any external references or bookmarks.