Re: A OverTheSpot patch for gtk 2.4.x and 2.6.x

[Tetralet <tetralet pchome com tw>]

Hi,

The OverTheSpot mode of XIM will show a floating window sticking with
the cursor position when we are typing.
The charactor we're typing will send to the application immediately and
the application will handle those charactors just like they are ASCII codes.

I don't think it will confuse users if the font and color were defferent
between the application and the input method.
Their difference will be very natural becouse we'll think they are
deffernt widget.

OverTheSpot is the most common input method for Chinese/Japanese users.
Some input method, like xcin and gcin, only support ROOT mode and
OverTheSpot mode because we feel that OnTheSpot mode is useless for
Chinese users.

gtk+ 1.x supports OverTheSpot mode for years.
We use OverTheSpot mode to key in Chinese characters smoothly and rarely
think it is very difficult to use.

And, I think that gtk+ 2 is a very basic library,
So that I think it should trying to support *all* the input modes.
If someone don't like to use OverTheSpot mode, he/she can swith to
OnTheSpot mode.
I don't think gtk+ don't support OverTheSpot at all is a very good idea.


Owen Taylor wrote:

> Really, the answer here has to be to fix input methods support OnTheSpot
> input. OverTheSpot in XIM is tied to antiquated methods of font
> selection (font sets) which are not supported by GTK+-2
>
> OverTheSpot is basically a hack to make the user think that they
> have OnTheSpot with a bit less complexity in the application.
> But that hack depends on it being possible to match font and
> color between the application and the input method, which is something
> we can't do with GTK+-2.
>
> Regards,
> Owen