Removing SCIM input method as default from gnome terminal

Question

I am recently back into the Linux world after about a 10 year absence. While I can find my way around most things, terminals and desktop managers are different than I remember. One of the biggest problems that I am encountering today is that when running a Gnome terminal (this is Suse 10.0 enterprise), I'm getting behavior in the window that I don't want. Specifically, when I type, my typing is underlined as if something is trying to spell check my window. Further, it seems as if when running vi or less, my keystrokes are only processed by these apps when I hit 'return'. I.e. if I'm running less and want to go back a page, I'll hit b, but nothing happens until I hit 'return'.

I seem to have tracked this down to the 'input method". Right clicking in the Gnome terminal allows me to set my input method to one of a dozen values. It seems that currently, it's set to "SCIM Input Method". If I then select 'default' or 'X Input Method', apps (i.e. things like less, vi, and even the bash shell) behave as I would expect.

Can someone tell me:

1. What is this SCIM input method?
2. How can I make it so that it is not the default? I've poked around various configuration files in my home directory as well as in /etc, but I can't see to find how this is set.
3. Can I just get rid of SCIM? Or is that tied into the window manager somehow?

Answer 1

SCIM is an input method editor, generally used for writing in non-Roman scripts (Japanese, Chinese, etc).

It is probably being autostarted via the xdg (cross-desktop guidelines) autostart spec, so check out the following files and see if SCIM has an entry there:

• ~/.config/autostart/
• /etc/xdg/autostart/

Otherwise, it may being run as part of Gnome's Session restore, in which case, look inside these files:

• ~/.gnome2/session
• ~/.gnome2/session-manual

Sidenote: An increasing number of apps these days are using the xdg base dir spec, which includes ~/.config/, ~/.cache/ and ~/.local/share/. Useful to know when looking for a program's info in your home dir).

Yes, you can just remove SCIM with the package manager, it shouldn't hurt anything, except your ability to write in Sanskrit.