Japanese Text Input in Fedora 17

Those who know me will already know that I'm currently learning Japanese.  Something that has helped with drafting assignments and corresponding with my teacher (we're encouraged to email to practice our Japanese) is setting up a Japanese IME on my PC.

As I use both Windows and Linux, I have the Microsoft IME set up on my Windows 7 partition (quite easy to set up) and Anthy on Linux.

After breaking a few things on my Fedora 17 instance, I reinstalled Fedora yesterday.  Since I couldn't remember what I did last time, a little Googline yielded what (or at least what I think is) the guide I used last time.

http://www.localizingjapan.com/blog/2012/06/08/japanese-input-on-fedora-17-linux-beefy-miracle-gnome-3/

Written by Mark Rogoyski, it outlines everything you need to do to be able to enter Japanese text in GNOME3

A few pointers for those who are not familiar with a Japanese IME (which certainly caught me off guard at first) are:

• ん - To enter this symbol, type "nn" rather than "n".  This has caused me problems where this character occurs immediately before another character on the n line.
• The IME automatically tried to convert to kanji.  Pressing return will keep the hiragana/katakana you're entered.  Particularly important if (like me) you don't know kanji
• Remember to switch it off!  I've lost track of the number of times I've Googled for a nonsensical set of Japanese characters or typed them in to an IM chat window.
• On Anthy, Ctrl+Space switches between input modes.  I've found this to be quite useful when quickly switching between English and Japanese.

So far, Anthy has proven to be a very useful tool.

さよなら！

NC10 Touchscreen Mod - With Demonstration Video

Hardware modification time!  I finally got around to installing a touchscreen in the netbook, then I got around to actually doing a video of it.  Since this is the first time I've actually talked in a video (usually I just demonstrate without saying anything), it's pretty cringeworthy.

To the hardware - installing the touchscreen took longer than I had thought, fortunately I was spending the day with some suitably geeky friends and we eventually managed to get the whole thing working.  One of the major issues is that there really isn't much space in those netbook cases.  As it stands, the NC10 has space where an additional mini PCIE device would have gone (the 3G equipped model) where we could install the touchscreen controller.  As there are limited USB headers on the system board, the controller also includes a USB hub.  This meant the USB header for the webcam could be used and the webcam is plugged in to one of the USB headers provided on the touchscreen controller.

Kit

I purchased this as a kit which included:

• Touchscreen panel
• Controller/USB hub
• Stylus (I foolishly lost mine a few days ago!)
• Plastic device to help open the case

Looks like a guitar plectrum, but a useful doohickey

The controller was detected as an eGalax and appears to be a fairly common type of controller with support under Windows, Linux and MacOS.

As Fedora is my distro of choice, I did a search on YUM for touchscreen and found a calibration tool.
  In order to persist the changes, I added a configuration file to /etc/X11/xord.conf.d/ containing the device info and calibration settings.

Section "InputClass"
Identifier "eGalax"
MatchProduct "eGalax"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Driver "evdev"
Option "SwapAxes" "off"
Option "Calibration" "1934 81 190 1904"
EndSection

Replace the values in the "Calibration" line with the values you got from the touchscreen calibration program. An alternative approach is to take the output from the calibration program (which includes the program they need passing to) and put it in a script that is launched at login.  I opted for the X11 configuration approach instead as I wanted to have access to the touchscreen at the login page.

Overall, it was an interesting experience and I find the touchscreen quite useful.  the GNOME3 desktop handles the touchscreen quite well.  It's certainly not as good as Apple IOS or Google Android as it's a desktop UI with adaptions for touchscreens but it's not bad.

Hairy moment!

The demonstration video is available here (finally - I get to try out embedding a youtube video!)

Setting up Google Calendars in GNOME Evolution

Now that I'm starting to make more use of the notification, contact etc facilities of GNOME3 I thought I'd have a go at integrating my Google Apps provided Email/Calendar.  This is going to be a long day!

Connecting an Apps account appears to be a simple affair, most of the steps are the same as for connecting a regular Gmail account.  The only difference is using your full email address rather than a Gmail username.

As Evolution is not a supported client, I used the generic instructions.  This only includes instructions for setting up POP, which I've disabled on my account.  When enabling IMAP connections for my account, the web interface rather helpfully informed me that I need to use "imap.gmail.com" as a server.  Armed with this knowledge I set Evolution to use IMAP+ (I've heard that gmail supports push email with IMAP) and continued.  Please not that security settings are SSL (not TLS) and Password rather than PLAIN for authentication.



The tricky part for me is that I'm using 2 factor authentication on my account.  First step for this is to create an application specific password, this can then be used in place of your regular password when setting up the connection.

Generating an application specific password

And hey presto! We now have email!

Calendars are proving a little more tricky to get going.  By default, evolution creates a single calendar, which appears not to be connected to anything.  The partial solution I've found is to manually add each calendar.  Because the the infernal 2 factor authentication (starting to regret setting it up now!) I'm having to keep the application specific password on hand as I need it to retrieve my calendar list and add the appropriate calendar.

This all went well until adding the 3rd calendar.  At this point it refused to allow me to add the calendar, despite having all the appropriate details entered.  Can't be a bad password as it allowed me to view the friggin calendar list!  At first I suspected this was some kind of limit.  So I deleted calendar #2, can't add it again!  I can add local calendars but not Google ones.  Very useful!

After a few more attempts I found it was being temperamental - sometimes allowing me to add a calendar and sometimes now.  Finally, I think I've figured it out.  If I don't enter a name to give this calendar, before retrieving the list from Google - it won't let me add it.  Specify a name first (even a temporary one) - it can be added.  How strange is that?

The only other "quirk" I've noticed is that my default colour selection is overridden when a new calendar is added.  Going back in to change the colour will commit my ACTUAL selection.  Annoying, but not a deal breaker.

At long last, calendars!

Don't check the box marked "Mark as default calendar" - I did this with my main calendar and no entries showed up in GNOME.  I could be wrong, but changing this setting seemed to help.

Default Calendar - Caused me troubles!

The end result - I can now get my notifications on my desktop.

Something particularly useful is that selecting the current day will let you see your schedule for the week along with that days events.

I don't see this as a replacement for the web interface.  I see this more like my Android phone, it's another tool to complement it.  The web interface is very useful for when I need access to my calendars when I haven't got my phone with me.  My phone and GNOME are great for providing notifications.

I'm going to need to use this intensively for a while before I can say for sure whether I'll continue using this and how useful I think it is.  It's certainly much more of a faff to set up than an Android device.