Re: Thoughts and questions about input

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

NIIBE Yutaka <gniibe@chroot.org> writes:

> 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.

Is the dial setting window modal?

If it is non-modal, what happens if you change the focus to another
window? Does it stay in preedit mode?
 
> 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.

Hmm, Emacs seems to actually support having entirely different input 
methods active in different windows. I'm not sure if Emacs is a good
model for how the desktop should behave or not.

Thanks for the information,
                                                Owen