Re: Unicode character entry

[Simos Xenitellis <simos lists googlemail com>]

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 8:53 AM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj comcast net> wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Jun 2010 08:27:24 +0300
> Simos Xenitellis <simos lists googlemail com> dijo:
>
>>> If I upgrade my Fedora 11 to Fedora 13, will I still be able to use
>>> Ctrl-Shift-u + Unicode value? If so, do I have to change the default
>>> settings somehow?
>>
>>The Ctrl+Shift+u + UnicodeValue feature is available in gtk+
>>applications which means that it works in Fedora 13 and future
>>versions of the distribution.
>
> What if the application I need to use is not a gtk+ application?
> In Fedora 11 Ctrl+Shift+u + Unicode value works in all applications.

There are three general types of GUI applications,
1. Xlib applications, which are GUI programs that use directly
low-level X functions to draw windows. Example: 'xterm'.
Ctrl+Shift+u+UniValue never worked for these apps.
See: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26747

2. gtk+ applications, GUI apps that make use of the gtk+ library,
found in GNOME and also in Firefox and OpenOffice.org. Firefox and
OpenOffice.org are not full GNOME apps as they do not use the full
GNOME stack of libraries. In OpenOffice, for example, there is no
right-click/input methods menu due to this.
Here Ctrl+Shift+u works as long as GTK_IM_MODULE is not set to 'xim'
(which means that gtk+ apps become like type '1' apps in terms of
input).

3. QT apps, GUI apps that use the QT library, commonly the KDE applications.
Here there have been no Ctrl+Shift+u support.
See: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/531208
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103788

>>The "complication" may appear  if you enable Chinese, Korean, Japanese
>>or similar complex "input method" support. In those cases, the input
>>method is changed to IBus which currently does not appear to support
>>the Ctrl+Shift+U UnicodeValue feature.
>
> I need to enable "complex Asian layout" in OOo, but only in OOo. Yet I
> also need to use Ctrl+Shift+u + Unicode value in OOo and other apps.

For this you need to talk directly with the IBus developers.
I would appreciate some input from the developers on the IBus plans.

>>However, in your case where you require IPA support, the situation
>>appears to be easy;
>>the gtk+ library already has a special input method for IPA, which, in
>>addition, supports Ctrl+Shift+U UnicodeValue at the same time.
>>To test,
>>1. open the GNOME text editor (in Applications/Accessories/Text editor)
>>2. in the editor area, right-click and select Input Methods; select
>>IPA from the list.
>>3. now type as you would in IPA. For example, ae→æ, : → ː
>>I am not familiar with more details of IPA; I suppose all characters
>>work and you may have to experiment a bit to find the key
>>combinations.
>
> It would appear that someone has tried to create keyboard shortcuts for
> some of the IPA characters. There are hundreds of thousands of possible
> combinations of characters and diacritics. There could not possibly be
> shortcuts for all of them.
>
>>How to you write IPA in OpenOffice? If you right-click in OpenOffice
>>there is no InputMethod menu. For gtk+ apps like OpenOffice, you can
>>run in the terminal
>
> In OOo I type Ctrl+Shift+u + Unicode value, followed by a space.
>
>>export GTK_IM_MODULE=ipa
>>
>>and then start 'oowriter' from the same terminal window. The IPA input
>>method will be selected.
>>
>>If you want to make IPA the default input method in your distribution?
>>You can add 'GTK_IM_MODULE=ipa' in /etc/environment and restart.
>>
>>Their might be a GUI way to better do this in your distribution; I
>>haven't checked for this recently.
>>
>>You also mention combining diacritics; as far as I know, there are no
>>keyboard layouts with combining diacritics yet so you can only do them
>>with ISO 14755 (Ctrl+Shift+U). However, I believe that you can use
>>precomposed characters; if the character (with some accent) is shown
>>at http://www.unicode.org/charts/ then GNOME can type if as long as
>>you select an appropriate keyboard layout. Such appropriate keyboard
>>layouts are the US English International and the default British
>>English ones.
>
> I cannot believe that the "IPA input method" is going to work. Suppose
> I need to type a ɨ (barred i) with a combining diacritic for breathy
> voice (Unicode 324), e.g., [ɨ̤]. Even an English syllabic r requires a
> combining diacritic, e.g., [ɹ̩]. There are no fonts that contain all
> the possible combinations of glyphs and combining diacritics as single
> characters. It's not like typing French or German.

Here is the source code of the IPA input method;
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gtk+/tree/modules/input/imipa.c

It does show that it supports combining diacritics with U+0303, so
aããẽg̃h̃t̃ỹũĩõk̃l̃m̃ñb̃ṽc̃x̃z̃q̃w̃ẽr̃t̃ỹũĩõp̃l̃k̃m̃ñ
and ɹ̃ and ŗ̃ and ɨ.

Line 125,
  GDK_asciitilde, 0,          0,      0,      0,      0x303,    /*
COMBINING TILDE */
could be replicated in order to support any other combining diacritics.

The alternative option for IPA would be to try IBus and locate a
suitable layout.
The predecessor of IBus is SCIM, and it should be possible to use SCIM
layouts in IBus.
Google for 'SCIM IPA' or ask the IBus mailing list.

> It appears that Fedora 11 is the last version of Fedora I will be able
> to use.

I would be interested to verify whether 'xterm' (Xlib app) or a QT app
is able to support Ctrl+Shift+U. Can you check 'xterm' and tell me
which QT app you tried?

Cheers,
Simos