Internationalization and native language support

At this page support for nonenglish languages will be discussed.

Set a chinese using environment on DeLi Linux 0.8

DeLi 0.8 has good chinese support now, below is a screenshot:

DeLi 0.8 chinese environment

Set chinese language

Select “zh_CN.UTF-8” when setup by delisetup, it should be there are two lines at the end of file: /etc/profile like below:

export LANG='zh_CN.UTF-8'
unicode_start

Add a good looking chinese font

Copy a chinese *.ttf font into a font dir, e.g., a WenQuanYi font : ”/usr/share/fonts/wenquanyi/wqy-zenhei/wqy-zenhei.ttf” . Then executed” fc-cache -fv ” with root and non-root user.

Install binutils package prepare to compile the software yourself

There is a binutils package in directory “pkg” of the install cdrom called “binutils-2.16.1-3.pkg.tar.gz”, change the current directory into directory “pkg”, then issue ”pacman -U binutils-2.16.1-3.pkg.tar.gz”.

Install a chinese input method

E.g., a small and fast chinese input method software ”fcitx”, compile it yourself, or install a ready-made binary package with command below:

pacman -U http://39file.googlepages.com/fcitx-3.1-1.pkg.tar.gz

directly.

Or, you can build a pacman package of fcitx with command ”makepkg -c”, I borrowed the “PKGBUILD” script from archlinux: http://repos.archlinux.org/viewvc.cgi/fcitx/repos/extra-i686/PKGBUILD?revision=356&view=markup . I commented the line:“arch=(“i686” “x86_64”)” and the line “depends=('libxft' 'libxpm')”.

Then, add lines into ”~/.xinitrc” before the last line, the last part of this file just like below:

# start some nice programs

export XMODIFIERS="@im=fcitx"
export XIM=fcitx
export XIM_PROGRAM=fcitx
fcitx&
exec icewm-session

In this way, chinese input method “fcitx” will startup automatically when ”startx”.

Change font size of GTK programs

The font size is a bit small in the GTK program. Create a file ”~/.gtkrc-2.0”, here is an example file, it select “wenquanyi zen hei” with font size 12 as the default font of these GTK programs:

style "gtk-default-zh-cn" {
     font_name = "wenquanyi zen hei 12"
     }
     class "GtkWidget" style "gtk-default-zh-cn"

Change font size of icewm

The font size of “icewm” is a bit small too. Copy ”/usr/share/icewm/preferences” into ”~/.icewm/”, and uncomment the lines of font set, e.g., uncomment the line ”# MenuFontNameXft=“sans-serif:size=10:bold” ”, and change size to “12” like this ” MenuFontNameXft=“sans-serif:size=12:bold” ”, this will make the font size of icewm menu a bit bigger.

Install a web browser called "skipstone" with good chinese support

The web browser “netsurf” come with DeLi 0.8 can display simple web page ( include chinese page ), but cannot input chinese into its input box with “fcitx” chinese input method. Skipstone is almost a full-function web browser and have a good chinese support. First, execute ”su” to become the root user, then execute ”pacman -S skipstone” to install skipstone web browser.

Some skills

Enable xterm chinese display

Xterm's default font can't display chinese fully. Press “CTRL” key, don't loose it, and click right button of mouse on the xterm windows, it will show a pop menu, don't loose right button of mouse yet, move the mouse arrow down and select “Large”, loose “CTRL” key and right button of mouse. It can display chinese fully now.

Abiword display and input chinese

Abiword can't display chinese by default, after you open a chinese text, press CTRL+A select all text, then select a chinese font, the chinese text will be displayed correctly.

Before you input chinese, select a chinese font first.

Activate chinese input method on Gnumeric

Left click mouse on the fomula input box, press CTRL+SPACE, chinese input method of fcitx can be activated.