Re: Input methods

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

On Thu, 2006-03-23 at 16:46 +0000, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> --- Owen Taylor <otaylor fishsoup net> wrote:
> 
> > I'm sorry, I have don't time to help; I think
> > Matthias answered you on one
> > of the lists
> > with the correct answer, which is that we don't see
> > that menu with the input
> > methods appearing in a typically configured desktop;
> > instead input method
> > switching will be done system wide using a system
> > such as SCIM or IIIMF. 
> 
> I don't understand most of what you've said.
> On Ubuntu Breezy, and on a virtual machine of stock
> GNOME 2.13.something, the Input Methods appears in the
> context menu of all text widgets.
> It has a list of items as I've detailed.
> These need to be documented.
> If nobody can satisfactorily explain what these are
> and how they work, may I request that they be removed
> from GNOME?

The context menu entries you see in each textbox come from
/etc/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules
which leads to 
/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/immodules
(That's Ubuntu 5.10, your mileage may vary).

When SCIM or IIIMF (or other) are installed, they place an IM module
in the above file and the above directory. This way, you are able to
choose between one or another, on an on-demand case.

You may preselect for your entire session which one of these to be
active by setting the variable 
GTK_IM_MODULE.
For example, you will notice the file  "im-iiim.so" in the directory
above, for IIIMF. To preselect this, 
setenv GTK_IM_MODULE iiim    (ok, am into tcsh :-)
which is the part between "im-" and ".so" from the module name.

The default Input Module is "Default", that is, GTK+ handles the input
method. Why would GTK+ bother here and not let X.org do all the work?
Because it does not only run on Linux; it works on other systems as
well. Part of this situation is that GTK+ duplicates the compose
sequences table from X.org to enable to type characters with accents
(either MULTI_KEY or dead keys).
This works ok for most languages now, though there is some work to synch
the table from upstream http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321896

If you want a GTK+ application to bypass any GTK+ Input methods and work
directly with X.org, you choose "X Input Method", or "xim". 

Now, for some other languages, the X.org keyboard component is not able
to work with some languages, such as Ethiopic, as there are too many
characters. For these, special modules in GTK+ have been written, such
as the Amharic one. It might be possible to get SCIM do this work; I
have no clue if it is possible or doable. In Ubuntu, when you install
the Amharic locale and writing support, you can actually write Amharic,
and most probably this comes from the Amharic GTK+ Input module (I
cannot think of any other way...).

Some of the entries here could simply get removed, such as Thai (it says
Broken), however, I do not feel that it makes sense to remove the whole
menu altogether.

In Firefox, albeit based on GTK+, does not show you this menu. That's a
deficiency in Firefox which brings about several other bugs. For
example, if your keyboard layout is other than English, Ctrl-C and
others do not work, because it expects the literal letter "C" (but I am
in Greek layout!). This is being worked on, slowly.

Hope this helps a bit,
Simos

> > On 3/17/06, Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi.
> > > I'm on the Gnome Documentation Team, currently
> > working
> > > on the User Guide.
> > > We have a request to document the different Input
> > > Methods that are available in GNOME.
> > > (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=129110)
> > >
> > > Unfortunately, I don't understand them at all.
> > I've
> > > asked on the GTK list, and I've managed to gain a
> > > rough understanding of what they do in general,
> > but I
> > > now need to understand the specifics about those
> > that
> > > are in GNOME, eg 'Amharic (EZ+)', 'Cedilla', and
> > so
> > > on.
> > >
> > > I've been pointed to you, as apparently you
> > originally
> > > wrote these.
> > > Can you shed any light on these and on Input
> > Methods
> > > in general?
> > >
> > > thanks in advance
> > >
> > > Joachim
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
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> > 
> 
> 
> 
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