Rime IME
Rime IME is an input method engine for entering Chinese characters allowing a wide range of input methods. Rime IME can be used with the IBus and Fcitx input methode frameworks.
Contents
Installation
Rime IME is provided by librime and can be used with ibus-rime or fcitx-rime.
Configuration
In order to work, Rime is based on schemas that should be edited by the user. However, it comes installed with a default pinyin input schema so you can use it as it.
If you want it for another input method, here they are:
- Luna Pinyin (Standard Mandarin)
- Terra Pinyin (with tones)
- Bopomofo (Mandarin Phonetic Symbol)
- Double Pinyin (Ziranma, MSPY)
- Jyutping (Cantonese)
- Wugniu (Wuu)
- Cangjie5
- Wubi86
For example, if you want to be able to type pinyin with tones, you want to use the Terra Pinyin input method. To do so, you have to first create a directory:
$ mkdir ~/.config/ibus/rime
In this directory, create a file entitled default.custom.yaml
and add the following lines to it:
default.custom.yaml
patch: schema_list: - schema: terra_pinyin
Note that the indentation level is important. Your file says to Rime to replace the schema list with a list that only contains Terra Pinyin.
Eventually, if the changes aren't taken automatically, run:
$ rm ~/.config/ibus/rime/default.yaml && ibus-daemon -drx
Note: Tones are optionals but you can type them to filter the list very well. Here are how to type them:
1st tone: - 2nd tone: / 3rd tone: < 4th tone: \
Example: if one wants to type hǎo
to display only Chinese characters that are pronounced this way, one must type hao<
and it will be automatically converted to hǎo.
Usage
Rime provides some great features that allow you to write good Chinese and all its punctuation.
Basic configuration access
At any time, while running Rime, you can access some basic options with F4
. The displayed options look like this:
1. Method name 2. 中文 -› 西文 3. 全角 -› 半角 4. 漢字 -› 汉字 etc.
The first one indicate the name of the method you can select (Ex: 地球拼音 for Terra Pinyin). If you want many methods, you'll have them in this menu.
The second one lets you select which language you want to type in.
The third one lets you select if you want to type the punctuation in full width (全角) or in half width (半角).
The last one allows you to type in traditional Chinese (漢字) or in simplified Chinese (汉字).
Chinese punctuation
You can access to all the Chinese punctuation thanks to Rime. Here is a little table showing you how to type some of them:
[ -> 「 【 〔 [ ] -> 」 】 〕 ] { -> 『 〖 { } -> 』 〗 } < -> 《 〈 « ‹ > -> 》 〉 » › @ -> @ @ ☯ / -> / / ÷ * -> * * ・ × ※ % -> % % ° ℃ $ -> ¥ $ € £ ¥ | -> ・ | | § ¦ _ -> —— \ -> 、 \ \ ^ -> …… ~ -> 〜 ~ ~ 〰
Advanced
Rime allows you to change everything you can imagine and more examples are provided on the website of the project (in Chinese): https://code.google.com/p/rimeime/wiki/CustomizationGuide