Japanese Input in Tcl/Tk

This page simply lists the tricks for getting Japanese input working into a Tk widget. This is under Linux (tested with Redhat 7.1, & .2 and recent SuSE versions.)

• you need Tcl/Tk 8.3.4 or later
• you need a Japanese IME such as kinput2 running with the XIM protocol turned on. My command for doing this is:

  kinput2 -canna -xim &

• you also need the usual things set for running kinput2, e.g. XMODIFIERS=@im=kinput2, etc.
• before launching the script, (e.g. wish myscript.tcl) you need to set the LC_CTYPE environment variable to "ja_JP". Without this, Tcl/Tk will not try and engage the right IME. You may also have to set LC_ALL to "ja_JP" too; I found this to be a bit sensitive to OS version, etc. (And these have to be set before starting the interpreter. It can't be changed dynamically later.)
• in your Tcl/Tk code, you may need to enable the IME access via the XIM protocol, e.g.

  set imtest [tk useinputmethods 1]

  (In later versions of Tcl this is enabled by default. Printing out the value of $imtest will confirm that the XIM protocol is enabled.)
• once the script is running you can invoke kinput2 for a tk text box in the usual way, e.g. Shift-Space. (Note that in 8.3.4 this brings up the old "root window" style of kinput2 operation. The modern "over-the-spot" style is there in 8.4b1+.)

Jim Breen
May 2004