This the the README file of xcin 2.5 ------------------------------------ A. Introduction: XCIN is an XIM (X Input Method) server which is widely used in Taiwan to perform Chinese input under X Window system. It is originally developed by Edward Der-Hua Liu and many other programmers in early days; while now it is supported by the XCIN Project ( The current release of XCIN is xcin-2.5 series, which makes a big jump from the old releases (e.g., xcin-2.3 and older versions). The whole program structer is redesigned, the various input methods are modulized, the customization is more flexible, and the core system is more stable and solid. The XIM protocol is also supported starting from this series (although several XIM patches for old versions have already appeared before xcin-2.5). The supports is not completed (currently it only supports the "Root" input style), and still under development and improvement. The goal of XCIN is to serve as a general Input Method server for various kinds of people, not only for people in Taiwan (who mainly use the Big5 encoding), but also for people in MainLand China (who mainly use the GB encoding). So we have tried to design it as much independent of the encoding as possible. We also hope that the supports of XIM protocol can help to solve the long standing Chinese-input problem completely. Any suggestion or feedback are welcomed. You can contact the XCIN Project Team through the xcin mailing-list: B. Installation: You should have a completed locale environment to install xcin-2.5. Currently Linux with glibc-2.0.7 or newer versions and FreeBSD-3.0 or newer releases are tested and OK. But for Linux, the platform with glibc-2.1.x or newer are highly recommended. For details about how to install the locale environments (especially for zh_TW.Big5 and zh_CN.GB2312) are covered in Besides this, you should have the following libraries for installation: 1. Berkeley DB2: For glibc-2.1.x, this library is already included. If you don't have it, you can find one in 2. GNU gettext: This is only needed for internationalized message output. 3. libtabe: For the first release xcin-2.5.0, the libtabe is included in the xcin source tree. But from the 2.5.1 and later, this library is maintained separately, and you should install it before installing xcin. It is obtained in The xcin stable releases are available in while the under-development packages are available in The installation procedure is straightforward. Commonly speaking, you only need to un-tar the package tarball, change into the directory "xcin-2.5", and execute the following commands: ./configure --prefix= \ --with-extra-prefix= make make install and all will be OK. You can run "./configure --help" for more detailed command argument description. Finally, you can customize the xcin configuration through editing the xcin configuration file, commonly installed in /etc/xcinrc. The detailed description of the configuration file will be covered in "xcin-2.5/doc/Usage" file. General speaking, it uses the Lisp/Scheme language format, and is divided into three parts: 1. Global settings. 2. Locale specific global settings, one section for one locale. 3. Detailed settings for each Input Method, one section for one IM. C. Quick Start: Before starting, you have to set the locale for use. Here we take "zh_TW.Big5" for example: LC_CTYPE=zh_TW.Big5; export LC_CTYPE xcin & If xcin starts without error, it will print the following message: =========================================================================== XCIN (Chinese XIM server) version xcin . (module ver: , syscin ver: ). (use "-h" option for help) xcin: XIM server "xcin" locale "zh_TW.Big5" transport "X/" inp_style "Root". =========================================================================== Please note carefully for the last line. It contains important information to start XIM clients. In the above example, the XIM server name is set to "xcin", the input style is set to "Root", and the locale, of course, is set to "zh_TW.Big5". Hence, if your XIM client cannot automatically search the XIM server, you should explicitly specify the XIM server name and input style to the client. To set the XIM server name, you might use the XIM client command line argument or resource file for setting, or more generally, you can set it through the environment variable: XMODIFIERS="@im=xcin"; export XMODIFIERS ^^^^ (this is the XIM server name) and then you can run any XIM client and use xcin to input Chinese. The input style might be set through the command line argument of the client, or the client can determine it automatically. By default, xcin will not handle any input from keyboard unless you press one of the "trigger keys". These trigger keys are configurable in xcinrc file. When you press one, for example, "ctrl+space", you will see the contents of the xcin window changes, and all your keyboard input will be handled and composed by xcin. Of course, to type Chinese characters, you have to be familiar with one of the supported Chinese Input Method. :-)) Enjoy! Tung-Han Hsieh Physics Department of National Taiwan University, R.O.C. XCIN Team.