[SCIM] Newbie question: scim::FrontEnd: X11 -- failed to connect to the panel daemon!

[Amish Rughoonundon (RIT Student)]

Hi,
 I am getting this error when i try to run scim:
scim::FrontEnd: X11 -- failed to connect to the panel daemon!
I have seen the answer to this question online but it was in japanese and the translation that google gives is really bad. I used 
scim -f x11 -d
and it seemed to fix the problem but I would like to understand what is causing this problem. If somebody could explain it, I would really appreciate it.
Amish
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