Intelligent Input Bus (IBus) for the Linux and UNIX operating systems is a powerful multilingual Input Method Framework working with many open-source IM language engines. IBus uses bus-like architecture to process communication between the IBus IM Framework and the IM language engines. This process runs per user session. There is no shared process between different user desktop sessions.
IBus is configured per user by the IBus Preference tool (ibus-setup). To access this tool, choose System→ Preferences→ Input Method – IBus. The following tasks describe some major configuration changes you can make.
Then click ... button on Key code label and an information dialog pops up.
Press the preferred key combination for the trigger key and click the Close button on the information dialog.
Then press the Add and OK buttons on Select Keyboard shortcut for trigger window.
The trigger key activates IBus on the application. If IBus is not activated, characters from input devices are sent straight to the application. The default trigger keys are shown in the Enable or disable label.
There are three possible locations for language panel position.
Embedded in menu (default) – Language panel is embedded in notification area of GNOME panel
When active – Language panel is shown as independent window only when Input Method is activated
Always – Language panel is always shown as independent window.
The following Language Engines are available on the IBus Input Method Framework.
Installed by default during installation process for the desktop
Anthy – Japanese
Chewing – Traditional Chinese
Hangul – Korean
IBus-Sayura – Sinhala
IBus-XKBC – Keyboard Emulation IM Engine framework
SunPinyin – Simplified Chinese
Various Language Engines based on multilingualization.
Optional Language Engines
Pinyin – Simplified Chinese Language Engine
Various Language Engines based on IBus table framework
The following table summarizes the available input methods for Indic languages.
|
IBus XKBC emulates keyboard layout using the XKeyboard Configuration Database. All keyboard layouts available in XkeyboardConfig, including keyboard layout variants, can be emulated on the IBus IM Framework. IBus XKBC is available in the Other language category in the IBus Preference tool. The IBus XKBC help provides detailed configuration information.
IBus Virtual Keyboard is a graphical keyboard emulator based on theIBus XKBC Language Engine. It displays a graphical keyboard in a window, and enables the user to input characters to the focused application by clicking key icons. As with IBus XKBC, the IBus Virtual Keyboard supports various keyboard layouts and variants for emulation. To launch the IBus Virtual Keyboard, choose Virtual Keyboard from the IBus menu in the GNOME panel, as shown in the following figure.
To display the configuration menu for the virtual keyboard, right-click the Virtual Keyboard application window.
Figure 1 Virtual Keyboard