Package:IBus/Chinese

Chinese is a large family of languages spoken by over 1.4 Billion people, the Chinese languages are divided into many different families, subfamilies and so on. Because of this there are a lot of packages that provide ibus support for various Chinese languages and their respective input systems, in this page we will try to explain all available options for typing in Chinese with ibus on a Funtoo Linux system.

If any package that you use is missing or is not functional, please do make sure to create a bug report to the tracker

Installing

Essential packages

Before we begin with the actual installation we first want some essential packages to provide smooth Chinese input. Here is a list with explanation(links in the name link to the github repos which contain additional information):

1. ibus-m17n - Provides a wide array of language support to ibus, including many types of Chinese input
2. ibus-table - A framework for making table based input methods such as CangJie and WuBi
3. ibus-table-chinese - Adds additional input method tables for ibus-table,

Additionally you might also need ibus-table-extraphrase as it provides additional phrases for some input methods, refer to the github README for more information

For ibus-m17n:

root # emerge ibus-m17n

For ibus-table:

root # emerge ibus-table

For ibus-table-chinese:

root # emerge ibus-table-chinese

For ibus-table-extraphrase:

root # emerge ibus-table-extraphrase

Main installation

Once you have the tables installed, you are now ready to install an input method. This step can be skipped if the input method you want to use is supported by the tables!

We provide the following packages that provide Mandarin and other Chinese input:

1. ibus-pinyin - Provides pinyin and zhuyin(BoPoMoFo) input
2. ibus-libpinyin - Provides an intelligent pinyin and zhuyin(BoPoMoFo) input
3. ibus-chewing - Provides zhuyin(BoPoMoFo) input
4. ibus-rime - Provides a framework for installing other input methods(plugins) including many Chinese ones

   Important

ibus-libpinyin is recommended over ibus-pinyin as it provides more intelligent input. The ibus-pinyin package is still available and maintained for compatibility and simple user preference resons

To install ibus-pinyin:

root # emerge ibus-pinyin

To install ibus-libpinyin:

root # emerge ibus-libpinyin

To install ibus-chewing:

root # emerge ibus-chewing

To install ibus-rime refer to the separate rime page

After installation you can find the input methods in the ibus-setup GUI, under Input Method, the button Add on the side panel, Chinese.