Re: Concerning Keyboard Status Menu

[Ma Xiaojun <damage3025 gmail com>]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Mathieu Bridon
<bochecha fedoraproject org> wrote:

> Could it be because none of them are of sufficient quality that they feel
> the need to constantly try new ones, in the hopes that it will be better
> than the rest?

Yes, but the closed-source Windows engines basically outperform
current IBus engines currently.

You should check a fancy one to get some inspiration (just screenshots).
http://pinyin.engkoo.com/help?b=1
Sogou's smart edition is fancy in another aspect but it is hard to
explain without certain Chinese language knowledge.

Anyway, I'm not arguing that Windows rocks. I'd argue that we are not
in a position that we try to provide all the input experience to user
directly. Because we are not able to do so. You probably able to
develop ibus-cangjie even without extensive Chinese knowledge because
it's simple in itself. But for Pinyin, Wubi and probably some others
are much harder.

Instead, we should try to do things.
1. Keep the IBus platform open to third-party engines. We probably
never have a perfect engine for Pinyin, but that's OK. As long as
different people can served by different engines.
2. Keep a list of supported engines and let distributions ship them. I
really feel that Mac OS X's default input method list is much cleaner
than Windows's. But it is worse in most currently Linux distributions
because input method installation is generally dependent on language.
If a English-speaking user want to get some inspiration on Japanese by
try inputting Japanese, she'd figure out ibus-anthy or ibus-mozc is
the package to install, too hard.
Note that a filter of supported engines doesn't help. For example, on
a system without Chinese engines installed. A user try to install some
Chinese engines. She will be confused by the fact that some appear
after installation and some don't.

> Also, when you say "users", who are you talking about? Linux users, who are
> generally more eager to tinker and try stuff? Or the more general population
> who only use computers as a tool to get something done?

Don't be bad to Linux geeks.
Even though many of them try hard to use other IMFs and they are
beyond our scope. Many Mainland Chinese Linux users are OK with IBus
1.4 by using ibus-pinyin, ibus-sunpinyin or ibus-rime. But if we break
the property menu, then I don't think they can tolerate that. I
cannot, either!

I don't have much experience with computers in work space, Mainland.
But for personal Windows I met, none of them are using Windows
built-in engines. This means that general computer users do understand
the concept of engines. ( I don't think they understand the concept of
frameworks, though. )