kubuntu 8.04 hardy input method fix

All in all my experience on hardy has been great, and i'll be seriously considering to stick with hardy when intrepid is released in a couple of days. Here is, though, a couple more issues, software in nature, i had to sort out for the box to run smoothly in kubuntu 8.04:

SCIM
- this is always a pain to set up, especially in KDE, but i finally stumbled on a good fix that dealt with all the problems in one fell swoop
- first install Chinese support (Gnome: System => Administration => Language Support, KDE 3+: System Settings => Regional & Language => Install New Language)
- im-switch to scim for input (switching to "scim-bridge" for some odd reason lags input when switching focuses

$ locale|grep 'LANG='                  # to see current locale
$ im-switch -z (your_locale) -s scim

- add your locale as a supported locale to ~/.scim/global and /etc/scim/global (editing ~/.scim/global should be enough) by creating the file if necessary and adding the to following line:

/SupportedUnicodeLocales = en_US.UTF-8,(your_locale)

- now this is as far as we follow the official tutorials, the next step solves using scim in firefox, and other apps compiled with their on QT such as Skype, aMsn, and MythTV
- replace /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/scim and /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default with the following:

XIM=SCIM
XIM_PROGRAM=/usr/bin/scim
XIM_ARGS="-d"
GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
QT_IM_MODULE="scim"
DEPENDS="scim,scim-anthy|scim-canna|scim-chewing|scim-pinyin|scim-hangle|scim-prime|scim-skk|scim-tables-additional|scim-m17n|scim-uim|scim-tables-ja|scim-tables-ko|scim-tables-zh"

- again, avoiding scim-bridge solve a lot of problems for me. The original suggestion to keep the GTK_ and QT_IM_MODULEs to xim also lagged input.
- restart, and enjoy multilangual typing

-shurufa

SCIM in CROSSOVER OFFICE
- yes, i gave up tweaking wine and bought into CodeWeaver's crossover software... now this is and will remain the only non-windows proprietary software on my system... it feels like i sold out...
- as a punishment to shelling out for software, getting scim to work in CrossOver office (MS office 2000) this has been a pain up where the sun don't shine for the longest time. To work around CodeWeaver's lack of support for scim input, we will change the default language it boots up in
- edit ~/.cxoffice/default/cxbottle.conf and add the following under [EnvironmentalVariables]:

LANG = zh_TW.UTF8 # or choice of non-english input method

- simple as that, next to make sure you can see the floating input window, deselect Embed Preedit String into client window in SCIM Setup => Global Setup => Options

-CodeWeavers