Re: 3.6 Feature: IBus/XKB integration

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Hi Maguerite,

Thanks for the detailed response!

It's hard for me to talk about the pros and cons of fcitx and IBus -
sadly I don't speak or write Chinese, and I haven't investigated the
technical operations of these systems either.

But what I do want to talk about is the user experience we try to create
in GNOME. In general, our goal isn't maximum choice. It's the best
possible experience. 

A user starts using GNOME. They have trouble inputting Chinese text.
A friend sees their computer, tells them to uninstall IBus and install
fcitx. Things work much better. Is this a success of Free Software?
No - it's a failure. We gave the user an operating system that didn't
work until someone fixed it.

In my experience, there is almost no chance most users will understand
the concept of an input method framework. Users are busy talking to
their friends, doing school work, or inventing the cure for cancer. They
don't want to take a course in how their computer works internally. We
can provide options behavior - are they using Pinyin or the Four-Corners
method? But we shouldn't give them options for how applications talk to
the input method.

We also really value using the same basic components on all GNOME
systems. You hit a crash on your system in GNOME Shell when using
fcitx, and you report it in GNOME bugzilla. If I'm using fcitx, then
I can reproduce the bug and fix it. If I'm using IBus or no input method
framework, then the bug may never be fixed.

Users should also be easily able to mix and match and switch between
languages. This means that we need an input method framework that works
well for all the input methods - we can't have one input method
framework for Chinese, and another for the languages of India.

So, please make the argument that fcitx is better and more aligned with
the philosophy of GNOME and should be used instead of IBus!

The best way to make that argument is to explain it to us -
 
 * Does fcitx allow for an easier-to-understand configuration user
   interface? Do you have screenshots?

 * Does fcitx have better feedback to the user while they are entering
   input? 

 * Does fcitx have better dictionaries and algorithms in its input
   methods?

 * Is fcitx less buggy?

- Owen