Paul - The Programmer

simple & stupid

Install sunpinyin on Debian

The default scim-pinyin engine is too hard to use. It almost have no support to Chinese words. I have to pick up the Chinese characters carfully.

The great google told me sunpinyin is a better choice.

I don't like to download the sunpinyin source code from its google-code repository and compile it by myself. My laptop is not so powerful for gcc compiling. I prefer Debian package installation.

I only find the sunpinyin package in the expriemental repository.  So, I take the risk to install a experimental package. I just had enough for the scim-pinyin. ;-)

Warning: The expriemental packages is not complete distribution. They may do harm to your system without care.

You have been warned.

Let's go on.

1) Add the experimental repository to the /etc/apt/source.list

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main

2) Since I am using the scim. I install the sunpinyin engine for scim.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -t experimental scim-sunpinyin

You may want to try the ibus. Some says ibus is more user-friendly than scim.

3) Configure the scim to set the scim-sunpinyin engine the default Chinese input engine.

Now I feel more comfortable for typing in Chinese. :-)