Upon opening Software, you can see Categories at the bottom. On my screen, it is on the far right.
That is the aforementioned ibus-libpinyin. Installed. Spotted no user documentation yet. Will find some and test it. It'd be ironic if a suitable answer was right under our noses all the time.
The boss has called me away for some lockdown-time emergency shopping for an hour. Like MacArthur and The Governator ...
back ...
I installed. I rebooted. I played with the floating penguin.
Nothing had changed. Nothing.
I played with the configuration ... including changing a font size spec from 0 to 3.
No joy.
The trouble is that it looks like Sougou is still running things - not ibus-libpinyin
There must be some place somewhere where one says "doh - ibus not sogou!"
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You all have been wonderful and I thank you.
I will have to drop this and come back to it at some future date.
There are a couple of lines of attack I can still try but, with Google Translate as a fall-back, I must get on with more pressing matters ... Voov is required for tomorrow morning just for starters.
I will close it as "resolved"
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Hi, actually it is better not to select "no solution" as "solution". It will mislead the future visitors to the forum who have a same problem.
If you are OK with it, I think it is better to keep the thread as "unsolved".
[edit]
I just unticked "solved" marking.
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Voov is now off my desk, so I accept the "unresolved" edit quite happily and will roll up the sleeves again.
While trying to fix Voov, it gave me some error dialogue in a box where the characters were all white squares. This tells me that there is something wrong with the support for Chinese characters.
Not totally wrong ... web pages render OK and the Google Translate Pinyin IM works ... but something is wrong with the support for Chinese characters even before we get into FCITX IM support
Massively puzzled by fonts in Zorin.
Firefox based Outlook lets me type western and Chinese characters in Arial - which I chose because I know it supports both.
I installed Fontmatrix.
It cannot find Arial in its list of 2504 available fonts.
What is going on?
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Would installing these support fonts help any?:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/translations/language-pack-gnome-zh-hant
I will do that.
But it leaves open the Qn ... why can't I see "Arial" in the list of fonts that Fontmatrix lets me manage?
Next to Times New Roman and Calibri, Arial has got to be the most commonly used.
Where I am coming from is this ... If Fontmatrix can't see it, maybe Sogou can't see it and maybe it really wants to use it so maybe that is why it hissy fits and refuses to output anything?
Whoa! I get a lot of instructions but no install button or instruction.
How do I download and install?
On the Right hand side, you will see a link to a tar.xz file.
You must build from source... But let me try something a bit easier:
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/language-pack-gnome-zh-hant/language-pack-gnome-zh-hant_20.04+20200416_all.deb
Save the file in Downloads, then double click to initiate the Installer. 
For Arial:
sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
sudo fc-cache -f
Unable to install ... unmet dependencies
I just downloaded the .deb files and both had all dependencies met... Hmmm
We can probably sort that out pretty quick but... it said that there was a newer version in Software. I opened Software and tried searching it and it said "no application found."
if you open Software, then search: language-pack-gnome-zh-hant
maybe you might have more luck.
I never use "Software", I use Synaptic.
Opening Synaptic, I searched "language-pack-gnome-zh-hant" and it and base came Right Up, no problem.
I installed both with no trouble, either- can you give that a try?
sudo apt install synaptic
Installed synaptic OK ... and found the two language-pack packages
... selected them .. marked them for upgrade ... got told of 4 dependencies
BUT ... I can't see any way to say "go ahead and install!"
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The "Apply" button on the Top Toolbar.
Yep - to no avail. Some earlier comments made me wonder about permissions. I am the one who installed Zorin and divided the partitions. How would I lack admin privileges? How to fix that?
I do not believe you lack permissions. By opening Synaptic, you needed to authenticate with your password.
Are the new fonts not showing in the font list? Arial?
Log out, then back in?
OK. Doing complete restart Zorin ... hope I find my way back (no notes were written)
Restarted Zorin - then Synaptic. Got a note that I lacked admin rights. Went ahead anyway. Marked 6 packages (2 plus 4 dependant) BUT "Apply" is greyed out.
Tried "Software" and got "No application found"
Used "Files" with "show hidden" ... No joy
。。我
I just typed that by (desperately) trying my floating Penguin again ... works just fine !!!
Absolutely no idea what is going on!
But I now have a computer that satisfies my wife's requirements.
At least one of the problems that I had that others may have had without knowing it is this ...
There is a configure Sogou option that allows you to alter the size of the characters that Sogou presents for you to choose ... the installation default is zero. The symptom is that everything looks to be installed to the floating Penguin point ... but nothing seems to be getting output.
Up the font size to 16 or so ... voila!
You have my undying gratitude - thank you.
Will close this topic.
Synaptic requires admin (or root password) rights.
Did you set up a different user account for your wife when you installed Zorin? You will need access to root periodically. I wonder if you need to start a new thread to address this issue.
She uses a separate Google account when on this machine ... but I set up no other accounts for Zorin ... just me. What is the best way to confirm this?
From $home, "dir -a" shows only "peter". Surely I am alone here.
How did you open Synaptic? From the app menu? From terminal?