Re: Input methods

[Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>]

--- Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net> wrote:

> 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,

I'm still largely baffled, I'm afraid.
I'm writing documentation aimed at the user, so things
like SCIM and modules... right over my head.

The questions I need to answer are:
* why would a user use this menu?
* what happens when they use it?
* in particular, how do each of the options work? How
does a user, say, type in Amharic characters once they
have selected the Amharic input method? Is it just
like setting the keyboard language?

So... correct me if I'm wrong, but is this just an
alternative way of setting your keyboard language if
you're running GNOME on something other than Linux and
X.org, and the regular pref tool doesn't work?


	
	
		
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