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- In GTK+ 2.x applications, you can use SCIM in two different modes, XIM mode or
- GTK IM mode. In order to use GTK IM mode, you need to install package
- scim-gtk2-immodule (which depends on scim-modules-socket). Then the
- environment variable GTK_IM_MODULE will be used to determine which mode SCIM
- will use. To use XIM mode, set GTK_IM_MODULE to xim (also remember you need
- to set XMODIFIERS to @im=SCIM); to use GTK IM mode, set it to scim.
-
- Note that all GTK+ applications should work fine with SCIM in XIM mode, so the
- package scim-gtk2-immodule is not essential for using SCIM in GTK+/GNOME
- environments. A big disadvantage of using GTK IM mode is that it may cause
- mysterious crashes if the GTK+ application (or some module the application
- dynamically loads) is linked to a different version of standard C++ library
- (libstdc++) as SCIM is linked to. For example, Adobe Reader (acroread)
- version 7 and the official Mozilla Firefox from mozilla.org are both linked to
- libstdc++5, so they will crash if you try to use the SCIM packages in unstable
- (which are linked to libstdc++6) with them in GTK IM mode. For more details,
- look at Debian bug #323216 [1].
-
- Mainly for this reason, upstream has slightly changed the behavior of SCIM's
- GTK IM mode since version 1.4.3. Until 1.4.2, SCIM claims to be preferred for
- GTK IM mode in all locales, so if GTK_IM_MODULE is unset, SCIM will use GTK IM
- mode (the same result as GTK_IM_MODULE set to scim) in GTK+ 2.x applications,
- which makes GTK IM mode sort of the "default mode". Since 1.4.3, however,
- SCIM no longer claims preferred for GTK IM mode in any locale, so unless
- GTK_IM_MODULE is set to scim, SCIM will not use GTK IM mode. The side effect
- of this change, is that if you have been using GTK IM mode with out setting
- GTK_IM_MODULE, your SCIM will suddenly stop working after you upgrade to a
- version higher than 1.4.2, you need to set GTK_IM_MODULE to scim to resume the
- previous behavior.
-
- The support for XIM mode in GTK+ 2.x has been significantly improved since the
- days of version 2.0. Although there are still small glitches here an there,
- XIM mode is generally quite usable. Because of the crash bug mentioned above,
- as well as the default mode change by upstream, the maintainer now recommends
- using XIM mode even in GTK+ applications. The maintainer himself has been
- mainly using XIM mode for a long time, and it had been serving him well. :-)
-
- 1. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=323216
-
- vim:textwidth=78:
-