[#VWR-240] Cannot input Japanese characters from keyboard on Linux

1. Second Life Viewer - VWR

Cannot input Japanese characters from keyboard on Linux

Created: 14/Mar/07 10:08 AM Updated: 14/Nov/07 04:53 AM

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Component/s:

Chat/IM, Internationalization, User Interface

Affects Version/s:

First Look: Render Pipeline, 1.15.0.x, 1.15.1.x, 1.16.0.x, 1.17.0.x

Fix Version/s:

1.18.3 Release Candidate

File Attachments:

SDL-patch.zip (7 kB)

Environment:

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Linux x86 (Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 7.04 x64, I believe this is independent from distribution.)
All versions since 1.13.2 at least.
SCIM-Anthy as IM server (again, several IM servers were tested and the issue was same for all tested environment.)
libSDL.so come with First Look distribution or SDL-1.2.11 binary distribution on the SDL web site.

Issue Links:

Relates

This issue is related to by:

~~VWR-298~~ Practically impossible to enter Japanese text when viewer is running full-screen on MacOS

~~VWR-738~~ SL crashes when loading with a GTK_IM scim module

VWR-2261 Use GTK for Linux Viewer input handling, especially unicode input

MISC-389 Meta-Issue: Group Chat/IM

Linden Lab Issue ID:

SL-41449

Description

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When one wants to type Japanese characters in from a keyboard, she needs to set up Japanese input method, and type a "IM-hotkey" to switch from ASCII input mode to Japanese input mode. THis is a very general statement that can be applied on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. On Windows and MacOS, hitting the IM hotkey allows user to type Japanese characters on, say, the chart bar on SL viewer.. On Linux, however, hitting IM hotkey is simply igored. As a result, users can't enter Japanese characters.

On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 09:43:29 +0000, Tofu Linden sent an email to sldev list and said SDL-1.2.11 allows us to type Japanese characters in. Unfortunately it is not true.

REPRO:

Start SCIM-anthy and sl viewer.
login.
Open chat bar.
Type a key "a". A letter "a" appears on the chat bar. This is OK.
Type a key labeled "Kanji/zenkaku/hankaku". this is the default "IM hotkey".
Type a key "a".

Observed behaviour:

A letter "a" appears on the chat bar. This is wrong.

Expected behaviour:

A Japanese character A (U+3042) appears on a special region called preedit area on somewhere on the screen. (The exact location depends on the user's personal preference on SCIM. In my case, it should appear just below the lower left corder of the sl viewer window.)

Cause:

I examined the cause of this issue. I believe the problem is in the SDL library. In particular, SDL_x11video and SDL_x11events seems to have bugs. I'm working on fixing this bug, and may eventually produce a patch...

All

Comments

Change History

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Alissa Sabre added a comment - 16/Apr/07 09:27 AM

I wrote a patch against SDL 1.2.11. I attach it here (SDL-patch.zip) for those who want to test it. A short note explaining how to use it is included.

I'm not sure what I or Lindens should do next...

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Tofu Linden added a comment - 14/May/07 02:28 AM

You should definitely contact the SDL developers to get the patch included in the official SDL (1.2.12 or whatever).

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Alissa Sabre added a comment - 03/Jun/07 07:45 AM

Updates of external events on this issue:

I have submitted (revised) version of my patch to SDL developpers.
Recently, the coordinator of libSDL group declared the start of rolling 1.2.12.
My patch is on the list of candidates for SDL 1.2.12, although no discussion has taken place yet.

If you want to try the latest patch (against SDL 1.2.11), it is available at http://alissa-sabre.cocolog-nifty.com/files/SDL-IM-20070525.zip

If you want to check the status of my patch in the SDL development, it is available at http://bugzilla.libsdl.org/show_bug.cgi?id=429

I'm reporting back on this issue here...

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Alissa Sabre added a comment - 03/Jun/07 07:48 AM

Updated affected version and Environment, because this issue is still in the latest version.

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Awsoonn Rawley added a comment - 20/Jun/07 04:03 PM

confirmed this bug is present in Ubuntu 7.04 x64.

Here is how I work around that:
Type your Japanese in gedit or some other program, then copy and paste it into SL chat. That works correctly for me.

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Awsoonn Rawley added a comment - 20/Jun/07 04:26 PM

still in 1.17.0 so I added that and noted that it occurs in ubuntu as well.

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Alissa Sabre added a comment - 12/Jul/07 05:06 AM

SDL STATUS UPDATES:

The SDL maintainer announced a PRERELEASE (a sort of final beta or release candidate) for SDL 1.2.12. It contains my patch. I'm running SL Viewer 1.18.0.6 with SDL-1.2.12-PRERELEASE. The combination just works fine on my Fedora 7 PC with GeForce 6800.

It is available as http://www.libsdl.org/tmp/SDL-1.2.12.tar.gz

It will be released as the official 1.2.12 on this weekend.

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Alissa Sabre added a comment - 20/Jul/07 08:47 AM

The official SDL 1.2.12 is released. It is available on http://www.libsdl.org/download-1.2.php

You don't need to compile SL viewer to use SDL 1.2.12. Simply replacing libSDL-1.2.so.0 should work fine.

Remember that SDL uses XIM so you need to set the environment variable XMODIFIERS appropriately for your Input Method configuration. E.g.,
$ XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM export XMODIFIERS
if you are using SCIM as the Input Method.

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Tofu Linden added a comment - 23/Jul/07 09:12 AM

Linux SDL has been upgraded to 1.2.12 internally and should be in the next release series. Please close or re-open when you can verify that this has improved matters.

Thanks for the work!

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Masami Kuramoto added a comment - 03/Aug/07 05:26 AM

It still does not work here with version 1.18.1.2 on Ubuntu 7.04. Is the required libSDL version included in the viewer release? I tried the following:

scim -d
export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim
export QT_IM_MODULE=xim
./secondlife

The SCIM icon appears in the system tray, but Ctrl+Space and other combinations are ignored. No Japanese input possible. SCIM works well in all applications except SL. I also tried GTK_IM_MODULE=scim-bridge without success. Please advise.

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Alissa Sabre added a comment - 04/Aug/07 09:03 PM

Well,

I'm on Fedora 7, and I have just tested the vanila 1.18.1.2 binary distribution. It worked w/o any problem. 1.18.1.2 looks to contain SDL 1.2.12 binary. (... and I came here to close the issue, but ...)

Masami, I'm not sure what shell you are using, but if you are using bash, your use of export command is wrong.

XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM export XMODIFIERS
GTK_IM_MODULE=xim export GTK_IM_MODULE

are the correct ways you need to do.

I don't think you need to set QT_IM_MODULE environment variable, but there should be no harm to set one.

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Masami Kuramoto added a comment - 05/Aug/07 07:31 AM

It's working now.

Actually my export syntax for bash was correct. But my default locale is de_DE.UTF-8 which works fine for SCIM with GTK and Qt but not with XIM. Unfortunately the SCIM documentation is not clear about this.

This is what works for me:

scim -d
export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
./secondlife

I'm closing this bug now. Thanks for your support!

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Torley Linden added a comment - 29/Aug/07 04:25 PM

FIXED in 1.18.3 Release Candidate viewer, an optional download. More info about what this means:

» http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/29/new-update-process-introducing-release-candidate-viewers