3.6. Internationalization

SCIM (Smart Common Input Method) has replaced IIIMF as the input method system for Asian and other languages in this release. The default GTK Input Method Module for SCIM is provided by scim-bridge; in Qt, it is provided by scim-qtimm.

Below are the default trigger hotkeys for different languages:

If SCIM is installed, it runs by default for all users.

After installing or removing SCIM engine packages, it is recommended to start a new desktop session in order for the changes to be reflected in the SCIM language menu.

To enable additional language support for some Asian languages, you need to install the necessary language support packages. Below is a list of these languages and the command you need to run (as root) to install their corresponding language support packages:

It is also recommended that you install scim-bridge-gtk and scim-qtimm when enabling additional language support. The scim-bridge-gtk package prevents possible binary conflicts with third-party applications linked against older versions of libstdc++.

Note that additional language support packs are also available for OpenOffice (openoffice.org-langpack-<language code>_<locale>) and KDE (kde-i18n-<language>). These packages can also be installed through yum.

A new user configuration tool called im-chooser has been added, which allows you to easily disable or enable the usage of input methods on your desktop. So if SCIM is installed but you do not wish to run it on your desktop, you can disable it using im-chooser.

At X startup, xinput.sh now sources ~/.xinputrc or /etc/X11/xinit/xinputrc instead of searching config files under ~/.xinput.d/ or /etc/xinit/xinput.d/.

Firefox in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is built with Pango, which provides better support for certain scripts, such as Indic and some CJK scripts.

To disable the use of Pango, set MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 in your environment before launching Firefox.

Support is now available for synthetic emboldening of fonts that do not have a bold face.

New fonts for Chinese have been added: AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni (uming.ttf) and AR PL ZenKai Uni (ukai.ttf). The default font is AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni, which contains embedded bitmaps. If you prefer outline glyphs, add the following section to your ~/.font.conf file:

<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <test name="family" compare="eq">
      <string>AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni</string>
    </test>
    <edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
      <bool>false</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
</fontconfig>

The Gtk2 context menu IM submenu no longer appears by default. You can enable it on the command line with the following command:

gconftool-2 --type bool --set '/desktop/gnome/interface/show_input_method_menu' true

CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) rendering support has been removed from the Anaconda text installation. The text installation method is being deprecated in the long term, as the GUI installation, VNC and kickstart methods are preferred.

The following packages are deprecated and scheduled for removal in Red Hat Enterprise Linux: These packages are being deprecated in favor of the gtk2 stack, which offers better functionality particularly in terms of internationalization and font handling.

If you need to display Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text on the console, you need to set up a framebuffer; afterwards, install bogl-bterm, and run bterm on the framebuffer.