How to read and write in Chinese

This guide aims at explaining how to read and write in Chinese on a non-Chinese system. Please feel free to amend it based on personal knowledge or experience.

Requirements
In order to support Chinese language and characters, a number of required tools, libraries and capabilities need to be installed on the system.

Chinese fonts
Most non-Chinese systems have no Chinese fonts installed. Whenever a user tries to enter Chinese characters from the keyboard, they will only see small rectangle boxes in place of the characters on the screen.

Input method
To read and write in Chinese, the first thing that is needed is a way to enter Chinese characters with the keyboard. This is done via a piece of software usually called an input method. At the moment, for the Chinese language, there are 3 kinds of common methods -- phonitc,shape based and a hybrid once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers. The most common one are wubi and pinyin.

IME
On top of this users also need a way to switch from the input method normally used for the primary language to the one needed for the Chinese language. This functionality is provided by another piece of software called an IME (Input Method Editor) such as, or. fcitx sunpinyin working, table not yet ibus not confirmed yet scim not confirmed yet

Once installed, this allows users to switch from one language's input method to the Chinese input method using a key combination or using the mouse to select a relevant icon in the icon tray.

Chinese fonts
As a minimum, install the package.

Additionally, the following packages are also available:

Input tools
It is recommended to use fcitx instead of scim or ibus.

To install fcitx, install :

sunpinyin
is provided through the package.

Launching the fcitx daemon at login time
Add these lines to the file and log out/log in again.

This will allow the fcitx daemon to start at login time.

Configuring
To configure the fcitx Input Method Editor, use the following package for graphical configuration.

Latex
Here are some additional requirements to write Latex files in Chinese.

CJK and xetex support
In order to write Chinese chunks in Latex files, add support for CJK languages and for [xetex] in Texlive.

This can be accomplished by adding or modifying the following lines in :

Then reinstall the packages:

Here is a working short LaTeX sample:

Editor configuration
To compile and visualize the output of the sample above Texmaker or Texstudio editor needs to be configured properly.

Open Texmaker, and go to ->. Under the tab change the following:


 * At the LaTeX line, change "latex" with "platex".
 * At the Dvipdfm line, change "divipdfm" with "dvipdfmx".

Through the tab, choose "Latex + Dvipdfm + View PDF".

Finally go to the tab, choose UTF8 encoding and deselect  on the dictionary line.