Configure (Other)

Setup environment variables

In spite of Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, other distribution don't have utils to help to setup required environment variable.

Fcitx can use XIM or Fcitx's own DBus protocol to communicate with input program. Since 4.1, Fcitx provides GTK2/3 and Qt4 input method module, in order to provides better experience in those application, it's highly recommended to use im module instead of XIM, in order to avoid unresolvable problem.

There are several places to setup environment variable. It depends on how you start up your Display Server.

Required lines

export GTK_IM_MODULE=fcitx # or xim
export QT_IM_MODULE=fcitx # or xim
export XMODIFIERS=@im=fcitx

Use GDM/KDM/LightDM

~/.xprofile is the best choice, since it will only affect X and will not pollute to other console environment. Some other people might like to use ~/.profile (Affect whenever you login), or /etc/profile (Global profile).

Use Slim/startx

In that case, you are using ~/.xinitrc to startup, you also need those lines in your ~/.xinitrc. And depends on you use DBus (im module and kimpanel need it), you might want to add

eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session`

At the head, to make sure DBus correctly initialized.

Other environment

Maybe you are using vncserver, or something else, you need to figure out your start script, for example, vncserver use ~/.vnc/xstartup. Treat it similar with ~/.xinitrc.

Autostart

For ~/.xinitrc, you can put fcitx to your ~/.xinitrc. Fcitx will run as daemon by default, so no need to use fcitx & to start it.

If you running a XDG compatible desktop, for example, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Xfce, you can run

cp /usr/share/applications/fcitx.desktop ~/.config/autostart/fcitx.desktop

To add fcitx to your autostart. You can also use tool provided by your desktop to do the same thing.

See also

Input method related environment variables