Comment 0 for bug 421637

Binary package hint: pidgin

Using SCIM for Chinese input works fine in most applications in Karmic (Alpha 4) but when I open a chat window in Pidgin and try and activate SCIM for Chinese text input the input box does not appear on the screen and I am only able to type English text. I have also tried right clicking in the chat window and selecting SCIM as the input method - but to no avail.

I remember that a similar (or the same) bug existed in the Ubuntu 8.xx series distributions but was fixed somewhere along the line. It seems that it has reappeared in Karmic!

I managed to find a <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=484607">workaround</a> for the timebeing:

1. Open a terminal
2. Enter the following line of code and hit enter: export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim pidgin
3. Run Pidgin from the same terminal
4. SCIM now works in Pidgin for that particular session

This is a major issue as many Chinese users will want to use Pidgin to communicate with friends in Chinese and must use SCIM to do so.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Aug 30 21:42:19 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/pidgin
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: pidgin 1:2.5.8-1ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=zh_CN.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-8.28-generic
SourcePackage: pidgin
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-8-generic i686