HOWTO : Traditional Chinese handwriting on Ubuntu 9.10

Traditional Chinese handwriting is available in Linux now. Tegaki Project provides Traditional and Simpified Chinese as well as Japanese handwriting input for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It is developed by Python; thus, it is a cross-platform application.

However, Tegaki supports SCIM only. Therefore, you should install SCIM and change to use SCIM instead of iBus at "System" - "Administration" - "Language support".

Install SCIM
sudo apt-get install scim scim-modules-table scim-chewing scim-pinyin scim-chinese

Install Tegaki
Download and install the following files from the Tegaki official site. The packages in Ubuntu repository cannot be installed.

(a) tegaki-python (install this first)
cd ~
wget http://www.tegaki.org/releases/0.3/tegaki-python-0.3.tar.gz
tar -xzvf tegaki-python-0.3.tar.gz
cd tegaki-python-0.3
sudo python setup.py install

(b) tegaki-pygtk (install this secondly)
cd ~
wget http://www.tegaki.org/releases/0.3/tegaki-pygtk-0.3.tar.gz
tar -xzvf tegaki-pygtk-0.3.tar.gz
cd tegaki-pygtk-0.3
sudo python setup.py install

(c) tegaki-recognize
cd ~
wget http://www.tegaki.org/releases/0.3/tegaki-recognize-0.3.tar.gz
tar -xzvf tegaki-recognize-0.3.tar.gz
cd tegaki-recognize-0.3
sudo python setup.py install

(d) scim-tegaki
cd ~
wget http://www.tegaki.org/releases/0.1/scim-tegaki-0.1.tar.gz
tar -xzvf scim-tegaki-0.1.tar.gz
cd scim-tegaki-0.1
sudo python setup.py install

(e) tegaki-train
cd ~
wget http://www.tegaki.org/releases/0.3/tegaki-train-0.3.tar.gz
tar -xzvf tegaki-train-0.3.tar.gz
cd tegaki-train-0.3
sudo python setup.py install

(f) tegaki-tools
cd ~
wget http://www.tegaki.org/releases/0.3/tegaki-tools-0.3.tar.gz
tar -xzvf tegaki-tools-0.3.tar.gz
cd tegaki-tools-0.3
sudo python setup.py install

(g) Models of Zinnia - Traditional Chinese.
cd ~
wget http://www.tegaki.org/releases/0.3/models/tegaki-zinnia-traditional-chinese-0.3.zip
unzip tegaki-zinnia-traditional-chinese-0.3
cd tegaki-zinnia-traditional-chinese-0.3
make
sudo make install
cd ~

(h) Install Zinnia Recognition Engine.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install python-zinnia zinnia-utils libzinnia0

Gnome menu entry
Add the Tegaki to the Gnome menu.
sudo nano /usr/share/applications/tegaki.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Tegaki Handwriting
Exec=tegaki-recognize
Icon=/usr/local/share/tegaki/icons/handwriting.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;System;
Comment=Tegaki Handwriting

How to use Tegaki

Step 1 :
Click on "Tools/Configure" icon on the right hand side panel. Set "Search after (msecs)" to 200 or larger. Then click on "Search on stroke" and "Confirm".

Step 2 :
Write the Chinese characters in the boxes provided. To clear the characters click "Sweep". If you want to make correction to the character that you just wrote, click on the character on the top bar.

Step 3 :
After wrote some characters, you can click on "Green tick". Then, go to the word processor or editor. Press "Ctrl+V" or click "Paste".

Reference
Tegaki Project
HOWTO : Ubuntu 9.10 on Gigabyte TouchNote T1028X