Re: On the spot input

[Steve Underwood <steveu coppice org>]

Owen Taylor wrote:

> Steve Underwood <steveu@coppice.org> writes:
>
> > In your notes about the future direction of i18n in GTK+ you say you aim
> > to support on the spot input, through XIM. Has much work been done
> > towards this yet? The reason I ask is that there are very few X11 apps
> > which support on the spot properly (actually there aren't that many that
> > do any kind of XIM support well) and any additional apps. for testing a
> > development input server would be most welcome.
>
> The only toolkit that I knows that has extensive support for on-the-spot
> input is Motif 2.x.
>
> I think so far its sort of a chicken-and-egg problem.

Motif, and a few apps which don't use any toolkit, seem to be the only things
I can find that support on the spot. I'm not sure whether the Motif support
is based on the old IMP, or XIM though. I only have access to Motif on a
machine running SCO that I don't often use, so I haven't done any real
testing yet. However, someone told me it still uses IMP.

I would be interested in any feedback people may have about real world user
behaviour with input methods. After observing hundreds of Chinese Windows
95/98/NT users, almost every one uses root style input. However, when I ask
them why they prefer that, they are simply unaware that other input styles
exist (Windows supports a very similar set of style to X11). I have no idea
what the majority of users who are properly informed would choose.

People what consistent behaviour, with things appearing in a totally
predictable places on their screen. Off the spot doesn't offer that. Over the
spot is just a bodge to allow apps to avoid implementing on the spot
properly. I'm fairly convinced that root and on the spot are the only two
styles worth having in a well designed system, but I'm very interested in
hearing other people's experiences, especially with other languages.

Steve