alt+shift: switch between English/Japanese
alt+` (The key above tab): Latin
alt+caps lock: katakana カタカナ
crtl+caps lock: hiragana　ひらがな

Sometimes the one for katakana/hiragana will toggle between the two. The shortcuts don’t always seem to be consistent.

I was trying to setup the same key bindings you were at first on Linux (shift+ctrl+[j, k, ;]) so I might try some different key bindings to see if they take.

The more I use FreeBSD, the more I like it. I was a Linux user for a long time (still do at work, not entirely by choice), but I like BSD’s more UNIX-y feel, and some of the more sensible things it does. Also FreeBSD’s really come a long way since I last tried it a couple years ago.

Update: I got the key bindings to work so I can switch between hiragana, katana and latin mode. I tried doing shift+ctrl+(something), but I think that conflicted with other existing hot-keys, but when I used scim-setup to bind keys to ctrl+alt and some letter (h for hiragana, k for katakana), it worked after that.

…”>this write-up and followed the directions for Ubuntu 8.10 even though I have 9.04 installed, as that was the farthest along direction set they had.

It works good, but I can’t seem to get the key bindings in the SCIM settings to take hold for switching between Hiragana, Katakana, and Latin. It’s a bit of a pain to use the mouse to switch it when you’re typing away.

Having done the setup on all 3 OSes, I have to say Mac makes it the easiest and is very pain-free. Windows XP was kind of a pain and I’m slowly figuring out the keyboard shortcuts for switching modes. I likely won’t be using Japanese much in Ubuntu so the keyboard shortcuts won’t be much of an issue there.

Good job getting it setup in FreeBSD. I may give that OS a try one day. I’ve been curious about it since OSX is built on top of it.