Thoughts and questions about input

[NIIBE Yutaka <gniibe chroot org>]

Owen Taylor wrote:
 >  - How does switching input language appear to the user on other operating
 >    systems that support it? (I believe both the Macintosh and Windows 2000
 >    have support for this.)

For Japanese environment, it's global to the desktop (both of Mac and
Windows).

Please note that for Japanese also use Arabic digits, Roman Alphabets
along with Chinese characters and Japanese characters for usual
Japanese text.  How complicated. :-)  So, the input method has modes;
direct input and pre-edit input.

For Windows, it seems that application (not user) can change the mode
of input method.  For example, Start--> Accessory --> Dialer, when the
dialog for dial setting window is displayed on the screen, the input
method automatically has been changed to "direct" one.  When closing
the dialer, it comes back to the mode before the execution of dialer.

This behavior is good for users as we just input digits for dialer.

Besides, GNU Emacs supports input-method as buffer local.  This is
convenient because the mode (direct or pre-edited) is depends much on
buffer.  The mode should be "direct" for dired or *Group*, *Summary*,
*Article* buffer for GNUS, while it may be "pre-edited" for *mail*
buffer.
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